Thoughts While Cycling

• This year we never got that March day described in William Wordsworth’s “To My Sister”:

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

Even today, oohed and ahhed about by the TV weather people, it was sunny and 55˚, six degrees under the average for the date.  Granted it was pleasant enough, largely because the wind was not sharp and cold out of the northwest, as it has been most of the month.  But it was hardly a “mild day,” and there has not been one yet.

• Easter weekend has brought out a new, annoying walking style on the W&OD.  Apparently a number of local families have friends visiting, because yesterday and today I encountered groups of six to fifteen walkers, strolling along in echelons of 2×3 to 5×3, all talking and gesturing.  Three abreast is more than the trail can handle on one side, especially if one of them is a wide load.  So the group overhangs, making it hard to see around them to verify that it’s safe to pass.
• I’ve had a couple of brief conversations on the trail the last couple of days.  Usually I like to push it enough so that talk doesn’t come easy very much, and so I don’t like to converse because it entails riding too slowly.  But these guys each needed some directions, and I was glad to oblige.  One was from Bethesda, doing a long loop from Rosslyn out to the Custis and then back in to Rosslyn, to catch the Capital Crescent Trail home.
• Of course this time of year another reason I don’t like trail companions is that my face is a mess of sorts, with my hyperactive sinus.  Not a pretty sight, I’m guessing.
• To give another idea of how cold it’s been, much to my surprise there were Spring Peepers singing today!  There must have been a whole contingent that thought it was just too cold and raw to mate back in early March.  They were the smart ones.  If Darwinian theory holds, this population should be more numerous and prosperous over the next couple of hundred years.  We’ll have to hang around to find out.
• On my way back home today I had a tailwind. I can’t say how much more rewarding that makes a long ride like my trek out to Ashburn.  All the effort of riding into the wind for 18 miles pays off.
• As I pulled up to the light at Maple Avenue coming back, I noticed the rider ahead of me was a blonde woman.  She was riding an old red Giant bike whose aluminum frame was a really clumsy no-nonsense design, with big lumpy welds.  Looked like a 50/39 crank.  Custom saddle.  She was wearing a sort of rose-pink jacket, and her calf-length tights had a Pearl Izumi logo strategically placed on the left rear.  “Well,” I thought, “the landscape has improved.  I’m going to regret it when we get to the hill and I have to pass her.”  Got to the bottom of the hill.   She rode me right off her wheel.

©Arnold J. Bradford, 2013.

Birds

I am struck this morning by six grackles, who have arranged themselves in a kind of free-form still life pattern in one of our holly trees, sheltering against the persistent northwest wind, sustained at 11 mph and gusting to 32. The weak sun glinting through the branches makes their deep indigo heads and their bronzy wings vibrant.  Their yellow eyes stare, sharp and clear.  One moves occasionally, but the others have been sitting in the same spot for ten or fifteen minutes.  This is rare stasis for birds, who seem always on the move for some reason or other, and often leave at the same instant, spooked by some unapparent twitch or sudden movement in their surroundings or in one of them.  And as I write it happens—they vanish simultaneously in a heartbeat and without a trace.

About three weeks ago, I caught a vivid glimpse of two courting birds in the late afternoon sun.  They were chasing one another through the branches and up and down the trunk of one of our Pin Oaks, and their calls were melodious and distinctive.  I could see they were small woodpeckers, but couldn’t tell in the light and with their movement if they were Downy or Hairy Woodpeckers.  Whatever they were, they only had eyes for each other.  I checked with the excellent online bird identification websites and determined that they were definitely the Hairy species.  Their call, one of several sounds they make, all elegantly recorded and identified at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology site, made the ID positive.  By now I am sure there’s a little clutch of Hairy Woodpecker eggs around here somewhere.

I have spoken of the neighborhood gang of several Blue Jays that bounces and jostles through the lower and mid-height branches of our backyard trees.  This is evidently part of their regular territory.  If they had spray paint and opposable thumbs (just about the sum total of assets possessed by human taggers) our Hollies, Lilacs, and other shrubbery would be ablaze in cryptic emblems.  Despite their bumptious, raucous manners and bad habits (they occasionally eat the eggs and nestlings of other songbirds) their energy, social complexity and vivid, pretty coloring makes them favorites for us.  Jane and I both loved them when we were kids in New England.  In Virginia we virtually never saw them in suburban neighborhoods until a few years ago.  Whether they are expanding their territory southward or the overall species has had a resurgence, they are now present where they were notably rare.  When they’re about they are always seen and heard.

©Arnold J. Bradford, 2013.