"Hope is the thing with feathers"

In an earlier post, I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't scan in an illustration of a blue tit from my favourite bird identification book, as I didn't have the right leads to make my scanner work. Well, two trips to PC World later (have mercy on my soul) and an hour long tech-support session with my brother over skype whilst we tried to download the correct driver, I now have a fully working scanner!

I love this book so much! I got it for 50p from one of the few charity shops that will still sell you worn out, written in books for under a pound, rather than brand new/barely read books for nearer a fiver. On the front page, it says "To Daniel, with love from Bristol Granny xxx" and the spine is coming off, but this only endears it to me further.

I was tidying up my utility room recently, and I came across a bird feeder and a large unopened bag of peanuts I bought in the winter. I decided that if I hadn't at least started the bag before I moved, they would have to be thrown away. So I filled up the bird feeder and hung it up from the porch in my back garden, easily accessible to the bird community, not so easy for my adorable cat to pounce.

And at the weekend I saw a blue tit feeding on the nuts! The glee, the excitement, the unadulterated pleasure that I felt! It was better than getting a parcel through the post, or getting a splinter out my hand. The once-full feeder is now only three quarters full, and I am so happy that I will be able to give the peanuts away one at a time to the birds, rather than keep them in a cupboard and ultimately throw them away.

The subject line of this post is taken from Emily Dickinson's poem "Hope"

Hope 
   

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

The Bird's Wedding Day*

This post comes a couple of days after Valentines Day, but I can confirm that the first bird I saw on Valentines Day this year was a blue tit (or rather, two of them). Tradition has it that an unmarried woman can gain a useful insight into the nature of her future husband from the first bird she sees on Valentines Day:

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/5005749.Why_you_should_look_out_for_the_birdie_on_Valentine_s_Day/

I didn't write this post on Valentines Day as I had a particular picture of a blue tit that I wanted to scan in, from this picture book I have called "A Colour Guide to Familliar Garden and Field Birds, Eggs and Nests". The images are wonderful; a page for each bird, with the bird itself in colour and it's nest/habitat as a pen and ink drawing.

BUT my scanner is currently out of action. It appears that since I used it last, I had mislaid the power cable. So I went into town to buy a replacement cable, only to get home and realise I had also lost the cable that connects it to the USB port on my laptop... 

So instead, here is an equally lovely blue tit illustration that I came across recently:

 

This picture is from one of the cutest zines I have read in a while - "The Smell of The Wild" by Gareth Brooks. It's a collection of drawings and poems about the British Countryside. (Consider this a reproduction of part of the zine for review purposes, and check out more of his work at http://www.appallingnonsense.co.uk/!)

I have no plans to marry (in fact I would go as far as to say I plan not to get married), so it is of little practical use to know that my 'future husband' will apparently have money (due to the yellow on the blue tit's tummy)! 

But I do find it fascinating the way that people make up explanations for things that they can't understand, or link together two apparently unrelated occurances to give their lives more meaning. 

I remember when I was in school, whenever we saw an aeroplane trail in the sky, in meant someone was thinking of you, and moreover the number of trails equated to the hair colour of that person. Or when you ate an apple you would twist round the stalk until it came off, or pull petals off a flower until there were none left, repeating to yourself "he loves me, he loves me not"...

It's actually only in the past few years that I have managed to stop using the apple stalk method to gauge the level of interest from my crushes, in favour of more hands-on methods like just talking to them.

 
*Apparently Valentine's Day was called the Bird's Wedding Day long ago as it was believed that birds selected their mates and began to breed on February 14.