Brr! That’s a cold wind. I think it’s coming from the north, from Canada. Might be bringing Montana snow soon.
But wait! What do I see over there? A door in the side of the hill? I wonder who lives there? Might they put out a bird feeder?
I’d check it out, but it’s awfully close to Halloween…. I hope it’s not a goblin hideout.
Harris sparrow braves the breeze
Teasing up a feather,
Tolerates the cold with ease,
Any kind of weather.
Food is easier to find
On the warmer days,
Winter is by far less kind,
He must change his ways.
Roots in cellars could be good,
Oh, to peek inside,
But the cellar’s sealed in wood,
With a door so wide.
Maybe it’s a lucky stroke,
Harris sits and thinks,
Really this is not a joke,
Something in there stinks.
Spooky, hidden, hillside cave,
Holds a vampire body,
Harris finds he’s not so brave,
Flies off chirping, “LAWDY!”
After midnight he’ll be bound
For a place serene,
While the ghouls go dancing round,
Spooky Halloween!
October 30, 2021 at 3:42 pm
Nice photos and poem, Anneli! Such a cute little birdie. I suppose that’s an outhouse.
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October 30, 2021 at 6:23 pm
NO! It’s a root cellar on a farm.
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October 30, 2021 at 5:14 pm
Beautiful Anneli.
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October 30, 2021 at 6:25 pm
Thanks, DK. We love our trips to Montana but haven’t been able to go for a couple of (Covid) years.
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October 30, 2021 at 6:13 pm
What a cutie. I really like the second shot! Tough going as the days get colder.
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October 30, 2021 at 6:24 pm
It was a windy day there, as it often is in Montana.
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October 30, 2021 at 6:28 pm
I love the birds!
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October 30, 2021 at 6:41 pm
When I took the pictures of this bird, I didn’t know what kind he was. I looked it up when we got home to BC and found out it was called Harris’s sparrow. Some info I found:
The Harris’s Sparrow was named after Edward Harris, a friend of John J. Audubon, who collected a specimen in 1843. Audubon eagerly named the specimen thinking he was the first person to do so. Little did he know that Thomas Nuttall collected the bird first in 1834 and named it “Mourning Finch.”
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October 30, 2021 at 6:42 pm
Thank you for sharing this information. I am so ignorant in this area!
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October 30, 2021 at 7:06 pm
We all learn a little bit along the way.
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October 30, 2021 at 7:34 pm
He is a little cutie! Great photos. I hope all the birds find lovely safe winter spots with plenty to eat.
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October 30, 2021 at 10:00 pm
Yes, I hope so too.
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October 31, 2021 at 3:50 am
Anneli, this is such a cute bird! 😊 I love birds and I like to watch them in our garden. We have set up three bird feeders in different places in the garden. These are already being visited diligently…
Anneli, stay happy and blessed!
Greetings from Germany….Rosie 😊
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October 31, 2021 at 10:46 am
Thank you, Rosie. This bird was very friendly. Didn’t mind me being there. I’m glad to hear you have bird feeders up, ready to help our feathered friends through the winter.
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November 1, 2021 at 8:15 am
Anneli, we also have a little “hedgehog house” in our garden and are waiting for our hedgehog “Paul” to hibernate again. 🦔😊😊
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November 1, 2021 at 8:24 am
Oh! That is so sweet. We don’t have them here except for a few cases where people have them as pets (but that’s rare). I do remember them from when I was a child in Germany. They are so cute! Paul – haha, that’s darling!
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November 1, 2021 at 10:49 am
Paul is so cute and funny. Since we live right by the forest, our garden is also his territory. The hedgehog house is in a quiet corner under thick rhododendron bushes. We built it according to instructions from the nature conservation association.
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November 1, 2021 at 12:44 pm
I would love this! I’d be out there with my camera.
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November 2, 2021 at 1:17 am
🥰
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November 7, 2021 at 12:23 am
Rosie, we can’t have bird feeders in our rental. But we live in a ground floor flat with direct access if the lawns and my neighbour ‘built’ a hedgehog shelter along her dividing wall. We had a large and young one last year and another two adults this year. But they are only twiddling by at night and sometimes they leave their stool on our patio. But only when we are away for 2 or more days….. happened twice already. They really really wanna make sure they are unobserved! Last year’s two were named Hector and Matthilde…. 🙃
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November 7, 2021 at 1:48 am
Yes,Kiki, the hedgehogs sleep all day, our hedgehog “Paul” does that too. We once opened the lid of the hedgehog house and saw him sleeping in his “bedroom”. At dusk and at night he comes out and strolls through our garden. We have installed a wildlife camera so we can watch him in real time on our laptop.
Greetings to “Hector” and “Mathilde” 🙃🙃…
Rosie from Germany
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October 31, 2021 at 4:48 am
I enjoyed your poem, Anneli. Aw…that cute little bird looks so cold!
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October 31, 2021 at 10:43 am
Thank you, Jill. He posed so nicely for me. Maybe it’s because there weren’t a lot of other trees around that place and he had nowhere to go.
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October 31, 2021 at 7:12 am
Wonderful celebration, Anneli, of rural life and the oncoming winter. I enjoyed the poem and the Harris’s Sparrow, great fun.
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October 31, 2021 at 10:43 am
Thanks, Jet. Those Montana prairies are so full of life.
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October 31, 2021 at 8:39 am
Such a cute little bird and wonderful photos. I also thought it was an outhouse at first. Beautiful scenery.
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October 31, 2021 at 10:42 am
It does look a bit like it but it’s built into the hillside. It’s not something we see much here, and I think it has been on this Montana farm for a long, long time.
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October 31, 2021 at 2:16 pm
Looks like he’s being whisked by the prairie wind! Not a species I recall seeing but I find identifying New World sparrows pretty tough at the best of times.
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October 31, 2021 at 8:27 pm
It’s range is central North America, from northern Canada to the southern US.
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November 2, 2021 at 6:06 pm
Love this ..beautiful poem . We saw a root celler in Newfoundland this summer.
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November 2, 2021 at 7:24 pm
Thanks, Anita. I think root cellars used to be a lot more popular in the days before refrigeration.
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November 7, 2021 at 12:16 am
When I lived in England. I bought a birds identification book. Wished since I had kept it, both living in France and now in Switzerland… he’s such a cutie 💝
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November 7, 2021 at 9:40 am
Bird identification books are good to have. I had to look this one up because he doesn’t live near us. We saw him on a trip to Montana.
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November 7, 2021 at 6:18 am
I also meant to say that the sparrows I know are all not shy at all and they proudly pop their chest out like real grown up guys. I love them to bits. They are always cheerful too 😊
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November 7, 2021 at 9:36 am
Yes, they are cheerful and people-friendly birds.
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November 7, 2021 at 12:47 pm
I love Harris! Hope you had a Happy Halloween, Anneli.
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November 7, 2021 at 1:21 pm
We did, and it was very quiet, since we live out of town.
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November 7, 2021 at 1:25 pm
😀
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November 10, 2021 at 12:31 pm
A very pretty bird and poem!
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November 10, 2021 at 12:51 pm
Thanks, Ursula. He’s a Montana guy.
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November 10, 2021 at 4:19 pm
Delightful and fun poem! The props make for a harrowing Halloween: freezing weather, root cellar, and a hidden cave. Thirty years ago, my youngest daughter was born on November 1. Living in Montana at that time, we experienced one of the coldest Halloween’s ever. Due to Arctic temperatures and subzero wind chills, all festivities were cancelled.
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November 10, 2021 at 4:25 pm
Oh I know it can get brutal out there in the winter. You have to be tough to live in Montana year round.
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November 10, 2021 at 8:31 pm
You seem quite familiar with Montana, at least with its winter weather.
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November 10, 2021 at 9:47 pm
We’ve been going there every fall for the past ten years or so until Covid hit, and the year before Covid we had to turn around and come home after getting as far as Great Falls because a blizzard moved in. We were frozen at the Wal-Mart parking lot there for three days. So lucky to be able to pull off the road and stay there to wait it out before turning around and heading home again.
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