Buckeye Birds

Northern Cardinal, female
in snow

A small tree stands just beyond my back-facing window.
As it grows steadily, taller every year, I’ve come to realize that this lanky specimen brought proudly home from school by my fourth-grader over 15 years ago, is much like the long-legged, hungry puppy, whose large feet hint at its future size while it waits, wagging--innocently asking for a home.
It’s an Ohio Buckeye—our state tree. And although the woods edging our property contain an assortment of others—pin and shingle oaks, shagbark and pignut hickories, sycamore, honey locust, sugar, red and silver maples, black cherry, white pine and spruce—the buckeye wasn’t here. The small tree with the broad palmate leaves and the beautifully doe-eyed fruit was missing from the woods of our new Ohio home.
So I planted it where all could see—the short, spindly stem with four huge, 9-inch leaves, just beyond my back-facing window.

Northern Cardinal, male and female
in Ohio Buckeye

Now, approaching 15 feet in height, I wish I had planted it further than the 8 feet it stands from our house at the woods’ edge. But its closeness brings the birds to our backdoor. In the spring, its sweet, tubular flowers in tall pyramids of pale yellow attract hummingbirds to sip its nectar. And, with leaves fallen through the winter months, its slender horizontal branches fill with feeder birds, dashing in to snag a sunflower seed or darting down beneath it, foraging from the snow-covered ground.
These are my Buckeye Birds.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Carolina Chickadee

Song Sparrow

American Goldfinch

Blue Jay

Northern Cardinal

The feeder birds

The house is quiet.
From behind a sheer, frosty curtain, the world is waking—while the moon casts the sharp shadows of bare trees in bold lines across the woods beyond my window.
It will be the perfect day to stay inside--watch the feeder birds as I sift and sort.

December has become my month for housekeeping.
Not in the literal sense, although there’s a fair share of that, as well. Closets to be cleaned, the dusty underbed world, a freezer stocked with food wisely packed away, then forgotten--all attempt to catch my eye as I walk past them.
I’m a great one for hanging onto things.
Letting go, is my greatest challenge.

Tufted Titmouse

A generously stocked feeder has brought a frenzy of dawn activity. Titmice and chickadees dash in, one after another, and grab the black oil sunflower seeds, flying off to nearby branches to deftly pry them open. Elbowing past the finches and cardinals who are rolling the seeds around in their thick, nutcracker bills, they quickly return. Showers of shells fall all around.
On the ground beneath them, the sparrows scratch, forward and back. A junco hops up and over a fallen log at the woods’ edge, his belly already the dusting of white he finds on the snow-covered patio.

Slate-colored Junco

After almost 3 years of constant camera outings on new trails to be discovered with new lenses and settings to learn, I’m wading through an increasingly deeper and wider pile and file of photographs—35,000. And it shows no sign of sorting itself.
The mind that at one time could find each fairly easily, now struggles through the rising, swirling tide. Hard drive spinning, fans wildly alive, I’ve started to tag it all, sifting and sorting, in this housekeeping so badly needed.


From beyond the glass, they look at me.
Then all is quiet.
Again, I must run and grab my camera.

Cooper's Hawk, juvenile

Cooper's Hawk watching feeder

From my Window, White (SWF)

The Woods Beyond my Window

From my window, I look out over the yard, through the Hawthorn just feet beyond the house, and into the woods sloping gently down to a small creek. Watching, from over the screen of my laptop, and behind glass, the lives drawn to this edge each morning.

Often, they flow past unnoticed.
Into the rusty browns of the fallen oak hickory woods and slender gray stems of the graceful young trees filling the understory, they step into invisibility. Without movement, added to this tapestry—
in the softened tones and textures of a woven winter wood.





Until I wake on a snowy morning like this,
and find the darkness brighter.
The Hawthorn filled with forms,
plumped and fluffed against a white cold.

American Golfinch, Carduelis tristis

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Suet Cakes

Suet (/ˈsuː.ɪt/) raw beef or mutton fat,
especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys.

The house still holds a heavy smell as I return from a day away--a lingering left from this weekends’ project of making suet cakes. The lard bubbling on the stove, a chore best left for those days when a window can be thrown open to draw the heaviness out into the yard.

And, though I would have chosen to make them weeks earlier, here I am, just days before Thanksgiving, fussing to cook and clean—and render suet. I take it, as I can find it, though—happily emptying the grocer’s cooler and running home, victorious, with my stack of loot wrapped in plastic.
It has not always been this “easy”--

For, what I had thought to be a staple of the meat case, tucked dependably between ham hocks and beef tongue, no longer is there.
In fact, simply finding someone who understands the term "suet" can be a harrowing experience.

I have stalked many a wide-eyed stock boy through the darkened aisles of our supermarket, a lady determined to leave with the hard, white, beef fat essential for winter bird feeding. Gesturing, pleading my case, to one obviously not acquainted with the less popular parts of a cow--only to be handed a small chunk, the few trimmings he could find, priced far out of reason, and designated, "Specialty Meat."
An older gentleman emerged from the chamber beyond the swinging doors, wearing the white coat of the butchering profession, pleased that he'd filled a special order, and approached confidently, intrigued to meet the lady requesting such an odd product.

"Whatcha goana use it fer? Soup?"
"No,…bird food."

And the raised eyebrow above eyes that met mine clearly was of one who doubted if this game of, "Can you help me find what I'm looking for?" had been worth the trouble.

Blocks of suet, wrapped

The suet is often wrapped and for sale now.
And I’m sure to take every last piece, when I find it.
The understanding may never come, but at least I give partial credit—for effort.

Rendering Suet on stove

Mixing other ingredients into melted lard.
I use natural peanut butter, oats, cornmeal, unsalted sunflower seeds, and an assortment of stale bread and crackers, avoiding added salt and preservatives.

Mixture poured into muffin tins to cool.

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