Country Diaries

In 1977, a delicately beautiful book came out, The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, which was a facsimile of Edith Holden of Warwickshire, England's 1906 diary. It chronicled her year of observing nature and showcased her illustrations of the local birds and plants she lived near.

Holden's "country diary" is my model, and Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and other American naturalist philosophers are my inspiration for attending to the near of nature in my new environs along the Carquinez Straits. I begin with watching and drawing the birds.

Our backyard apple tree was left unpruned and still covered in slowly rotting fruit for the winter. This first attracted the Western Scrub Jays and Robins, but it is the Northern Mockingbird who really seized the tree as his territory, and for days we could watch him plumping himself on half-chewed apples.

In late February, I added a birdfeeder with sunflower and small seeds, and we have since been besieged by House Finch. But, this past week, I have also observed a large flock of Cedar Waxwings come through.

Other birds of note in the environs, have been Black Phoebes, a Northern Flicker, crows, mourning dove, vultures and a hawk I cannot identify as yet. We also were visited by a Yellow-Rumped Warpler and a Chestnut-Backed Chickadee.

"Women have less accurate measure of time than men. There is a clock in Adam: none in Eve," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. This doesn't have to be taken as a sexist remark (though sexism pervaded the culture in Emerson's day, he was relatively enlightened as to women's value and intelligence). Instead, I choose to read it as a compliment. To photograph a bird, for example, requires losing a sense of time; one must be patient and greatly slowed to wait for the right moment to snap the shutter. I am learning to photograph birds as I am learning to wait for the right moments when I shall snap the shutter.