Winter #24: Ugly Duckling

6:10am-7am, Peters Hill, Arnold Arboretum
cool, mostly clear

It's my first morning back in Boston since Sunday's thaw and I find the change from snowy/icy to exposed raggedy brown bewildering.

I see the dirt, leaves, and occasional tennis ball that's been buried for two months. It's kind of ugly, to be honest! A sort of awkward adolescent transition between the glamorous bright white of winter and the green mayhem of spring.

Today's bird is a beautiful red-winged blackbird, glossy black with red splotches (lined with yellow) on its shoulders:


There were dozens of them at the hill this morning, and they were so loud with their melodious trills and squeaks that I at first mistook them to be starlings. A flock of them made quite the Hitchcock-ian scene, large and numerously perched in a tall tree, raising a ruckus, while small detachments went wheeling around the sky.