Ozark Oddments: I get by with a little help from... total strangers

Monday, September 28, 2009

I get by with a little help from... total strangers

I suppose everyone has a good story to tell about how a total stranger helped them in a time of need.

When we were living in Oregon, an angel in a tow truck just happened to drive by where I was stuck out on a country road in the middle of the rye grass fields and the sheep pastures 15 miles from town with a 3-year-old. My big old Ford station wagon had a flat tire and the spare was flat too. He totally rescued me. Took me, the tire, and the kid to town. He fixed the tire, drove back with me, the tire, and the kid. I mention this because one day I did drive off after church and left our child at the church nursery and I was almost halfway home before I realized it. And he put the tire on.

So, a few days ago, one of those ubiquitous LGBs (little gray birds), the type that drive bird watchers absolutely nuts because they will not sit still long enough to get a good look at them to figure out what the heck they are, crashed into the glass panel of the storm door that opens onto the deck.

And Richard happened to be at the back door and he noticed it and told me, and I grabbed the camera, and the bird book.

When I say "LGB," what I actually mean are the warblers, and it really is not a very accurate label to hang on them because some of them are very brightly colored indeed. Even expert bird watchers can get extremely frustrated trying to sort the warblers out, though, especially in the fall. Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds East of the Rockies has two whole pages devoted to Confusing Fall Warblers.

So there it sat...

Looking around....

And I grabbed the bird book.... and what the heck is it? No clue at all. And then after a minute or so, it flew off to live another day. Fortunately.

It looks sort of like several different possibilities and I was getting a bit frustrated, but not to the point where I was going to hurl the Field Guide against the wall or anything.

So I found this really nice Web site maintained by this very nice person named Giff - which I am guessing is a man -- and he helped me sort this out and it is a taa daaa (drum roll)

Philadelphia Vireo!

Not a warbler at all.

1 comment:

Oklahoma Granny said...: I'm so glad the little guy was ok and was able to fly off to his family.; 9:17 AM

Post a Comment

Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

+++

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

+++

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

+++

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

+++

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"