Reading Update

Book #5 of 2025 was Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout. I've mostly found that the books by Strout that I've read in the past have been about loneliness. This one had lonely people in it too, but it was also about friendships and how people interact with each other. 

Book #6 was The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl. I loved this gentle look at a backyard in Nashville. 

Book #7 was North Woods, by Daniel Mason. In this novel we see centuries of events in one small plot of ground in Western Massachusetts. I liked some sections more than others, but overall this kept me reading. I especially liked the ending.

 

Book #8 was This Motherless Land, by Nikki May. This was presented to me as a retelling of Mansfield Park, which intrigued me because I couldn't imagine an updating of that book. It's really not at all what I was expecting. The only Mansfield Park related thing is the unfortunate cousin coming to live with the wealthy cousins. Plus there are some people in it called the Bertrams. It was a good story, though, and I enjoyed the Nigeria/England aspect of it. 

Book #9 was The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis. I reread the Narnia books in times of great stress, which this is turning out to be.

 

Book #10 was I Cheerfully Refuse, by Lief Enger. I really enjoyed this story set in the near future in the US. Everything has pretty much collapsed, including literacy, but the main character's wife, Lark, has a bookstore. And there's an epic boat trip. This was a perfect read for me.

 

Book #11 was Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese. This is such an amazing book. I just read Verghese's more recent book, The Covenant of Water, and liked it so much that I had to go looking for this one too. It's set mostly in Ethiopia, which is a big draw for me, but I also loved the parts in the United States. Like the other novel, this one has a big focus on medical issues, but this one is about a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. At the end, Verghese mentions John Irving in his acknowledgements, and I thought, oh yeah, that's who this book reminded me of. Verghese has the same sense of the weirdness of individual humans. These characters are absolutely unforgettable and I just wish Verghese would write faster. 

Book #12 was The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with recipes), by Kate Lebo. I expected this to be more poetry than it was. It was interesting to learn about the different fruits, but this was mostly a book of personal essays about Lebo's own experiences, not just with the fruits but with life in general.

Poetry Friday: Writing Group

I'm in a new writing group. I can hardly say it out loud. The last time I was in a writing group was when I was still in Haiti. By the time I left there, the members were already in several different time zones. It got too complicated to work out meetings. Now I'm meeting with someone (just two of us so far) in person, across from each other at a real wooden table instead of on Zoom. Is it real? It feels too good to be true.

We've only met once. We shared some work. Then the other group member showed me a poem she'd written in addition to her prose piece. It brought tears to my eyes. I asked to take a photo of it with my phone. She said yes, and I did. I remembered how much I love writing and being around writing, especially now that I'm teaching something different. 

I've written so little since moving here. I make myself do Birdtober and I've participated in the Poetry Month here (March), writing daily. I have a few things in my folder. But maybe I'll have more now.

Here's something I wrote in March. Like my friend's poem, it's about motherhood. Hers was better. But at least I wrote.

Bedtime


Then:
stories
songs
hugs and kisses
quiet

Now:
quiet

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Miss Rumphius has this week's roundup.

Reading Update

Book #2 of 2025 was April's Grave, by Susan Howatch. This is a novel I'd never heard of before, and I thought I had read all of Susan Howatch's work. I found it among used books donated to a Ugandan NGO. Turns out there are a few more novellas like this one, published in 1974 and out of print. You can definitely see the Howatch style at work, but this is short, unlike her usual enormously long works. 

Book #3 was Light on Snow, by Anita Shreve. This is a terribly sad, but ultimately redemptive story of a father and daughter who find an abandoned baby.

Book #4 was The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese. Set in South India, this is a sprawling story of multiple generations of a family. I found it on several end-of-year lists for 2024, and inevitably it was named as a favorite. It was so good and so absorbing that now I will definitely have to read his other book that everyone is always talking about, Cutting for Stone.

Fifteen Years

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Although it was a long time ago now, I still remember the details of that afternoon and evening, and the aftermath, with great clarity. I've written about it so much here, especially in the months I spent with my children in the US right after it happened. I couldn't stop replaying it, thinking of all the different aspects of the suffering it caused. 

Now, of course, Haiti is in a different kind of crisis. Here's RFI's article from today, commemorating the earthquake and describing the current situation.

Poetry Friday: 2025 Bird of the Year

Before 2023 I didn't know that the American Birding Association had a Bird of the Year, but they do! In 2023 it was the Belted Kingfisher and last year it was the Golden-winged Warbler. This year they have just announced that they have chosen the Common Loon. (At that link you can see the beautiful illustration that Ojibwe artist Sam Zimmerman did of it for the cover of Birding magazine.) 

The podcast I listened to about the choice and the article on the ABA website both emphasize the fact that this bird is most known for its sound. The Wikipedia article on the Common Loon includes a list of movies that used its call for maximum creepiness, including many set in places where this bird definitely does not live. (Scroll all the way down to the Popular Culture section.)

 

I chose this wonderful poem to honor the Common Loon today. I especially like these lines: "Their wails like wolves, their/ calls like an echo without origin, their/ calls like an echo of lake, or what makes lake/ lake."

Joy

by Miller Oberman

 

 

Like the time I dreamt about a loon family,

just some common loons—not metaphors

in any way, just real loons in a lake swimming

near each other so it was clear they were a set,

preferring each other’s company in the cold

still lake with its depth of reflected pines.

Here's the rest.

Kat has today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Another Heron

Last February I posted about the fifteen heron species I had seen. (I've also seen five kinds of egrets, which are technically also herons, but I'm sticking with the ones with heron in their name.) Over the break from school, I saw a new one, a sixteenth: the Goliath Heron! It's the largest of all heron species, and I saw it on a boat ride on the Nile.

Here's a Galway Kinnell poem about a different kind of heron we have here in Uganda. I took his last line and used it to start my own poem about our boat ride.

The Gray Heron

It held its head still

while its body and green

legs wobbled in wide arcs

from side to side.

Click here to read about the near-mystical experience that came next.

 

 

Possibilities


Could I change into something else?
I wonder

as we sail down the Nile
and our guide Moses explains what’s in front of us
in the last week of the year

I peer at other lives through my binoculars:

Multicolored flying flowers,
the Red-throated Bee-eaters
flit back and forth

A lone elephant
eats steadily,
as it must do up to 20 hours a day
to maintain its enormous size.

Raucous laughter from
Eastern Plantain-eaters.
suggest they’re just tickled with the whole wacky world.

Fish-Eagles
survey their territory
from the top of ancient trees

Black Crakes
rush busily
through the reeds

And there’s the Goliath Heron,
enormous and solitary,
fishing patiently in the river.

Could I be one of them?
New year, new me?
Could I exchange my worries for theirs?

Moses tells us calmly
how lucky we are to see all of these creatures
as we sail back to the shore
where we actually live.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

 

Mary Lee has today's roundup. 

 

 

SJT and OLW, plus the first Reading Update of 2025

Happy New Year! Today is the first SJT (Spiritual Journey Thursday) of the year. Our host today is Margaret (thanks for hosting, Margaret!) and our topic is our OLW, or One Little Word, for 2025. 

 

 

Once again I have given my OLW a lot of thought, and once again I am sticking with the same word. This is the third year I will be using the word Feather. Here is what I wrote about this word in 2023, when it was mostly about lightness, and here are my reflections from 2024, in which I shared a poem by Matthew Brenneman that included the line "there's something to be said/For feathering a kind of heaven/On a few twigs and some frayed bits of thread,/From what she finds that she is given." In 2024 I continued gathering feathers on my birding walks and sticking them in bottles and containers in my house and on my desk at work. At this time of my life they seem appropriate decorations for my empty nest - ephemeral and fragile and yet tough as all get-out. In 2025 all those resonances of feathers will, I imagine, continue to be important to me. I still want to cultivate and collect lightness and beauty and stop taking everything so seriously all the time. But I've just been reading the book below, so here's some more of what I'm learning and thinking about: John Stott, well-known theologian and birder who died in 2011, has a chapter about the passages from the Bible in which God is compared to a female bird who is sheltering her chicks under her wings. Another picture of feathers.

This image of God's protection is a complicated one, because I always think of the people around the world who suffer so much, who are seemingly abandoned by God's lovingkindness. In Haiti, for example, over 700,000 people are internally displaced, chased from their homes by ruthless gangs. And those are the people who have survived the massacres of this past year. Oh God, extend the shelter of your feathers to these innocent victims! 

 

Book #1 of 2025 was The Birds Our Teachers by John Stott. This book appears to be out of print, so I've linked to the least expensive version I can find on Amazon. I bought my copy at a warehouse of used books in Mukono, Kampala. The books were shipped here from other countries where they were donated, and they are being sold by an NGO to fund their work. I've been wanting to read this book for a long time. Is it fanciful to imagine that some kind of providence brought it here to this city where I unexpectedly find myself? Can I believe that and at the same time hold room in my brain for people living with next to nothing on the streets or in the parks and schools and gymnasiums of another city where I found myself for 25 years? And living there not because of an earthquake, as happened in 2010, but because of their own countrymen? How can I believe that God's care for me goes as far as to send me the books I need to read exactly when I need them, and yet other people don't even have the modest places to live that they used to? I'm not sure, but I'm grateful that one of the boxes I went through looking for books for our school library had this one, and that for a few thousand shillings, I was able to bring it home.

Reading Update plus What I Read in 2024

Book #73 of the year was The Cliffs, by J. Courtney Sullivan. I really enjoyed this book about family history, inheritance, houses, alcoholism, and other things. It was quite woo-woo.

Book #74 was Counting Miracles, by Nicholas Sparks. This was my first Sparks novel, and I read it with my book group. Prior to this, I had read one of Sparks' books, but a non-fiction one, Three Weeks with My Brother (the link is to what I wrote about it at the time, in 2009). The story was a little slight (it felt as though the conflict was manufactured just to keep the plot going), and the back-story was super-traumatic (wait, I though this was just going to be a fun read!), but overall it was entertaining. Plus, our discussions are always great, no matter what we read. Looking forward to another year of reading with my book group buds!

Book #75 was The Unwedding, by Ally Condie. It was a murder mystery set at a wedding, and I do seem to have read a lot of this kind of thing this year, rather forgettable page-turners. Maybe time for a little upgrade in 2025?

Book #76 was Playground, by Richard Powers. I've never read a Richard Powers book that wasn't very much worth reading. I think maybe my favorite is still the first one I read, The Echo Maker. But this one was terrific too. It's about the ocean, AI, long friendships, and climate change. Highly recommended.

Book #77 was The Five-Star Weekend, by Elin Hilderbrand. This was my third Hilderbrand book. They are all beach-y books, but with something a bit more, making them less forgettable. This one is definitely fluffy, but I can't stop reading books about friendships.

Book #78 was in our library at school. It's out of print, and I enjoyed it a lot, so I'm including it even though it took me less than half an hour to read. It was Have You Ever Heard of a Kangaroo Bird?, by Barbara Brenner.

 

Book #79 was The Lioness, by Chris Bohjalian. This was probably not the best book to read right before going on safari. It's about an actress in the 1960s who goes on safari in Kenya, taking a collection of her favorite people. Dreadful things ensue. 

 

Book #80 was Home Front, by Kristin Hannah. Jolene flies helicopters for the National Guard, and her husband isn't supportive. He's especially not supportive when she gets deployed to Iraq. The family (which includes two kids) suffers horrendously but the book is ultimately redemptive. This was my fifth Hannah book. I think three of them were this year.

Book #81 was How to Stay Married, by Harrison Scott Key. The subtitle is "The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told," which is a lot to live up to, but it is definitely an insane love story. I really couldn't believe his wife was OK with him telling all these details, but he says she was. It's a good read.

Book #82 was Absolution, by Alice McDermott. McDermott wrote one of my all-time favorite books, That Night, but I'm pretty sure I haven't read anything else she's written. This was very good. Set mostly in Saigon, different points of view, looking back over life - just very good.

Book #83 was Chanson Douce, by Leïla Slimani. I read the English translation of this, The Perfect Nanny, back in 2019. At the time I said what I liked best about it was the setting in Paris. I'm not sure why I liked that best, since it's definitely the underside of Paris, what it's like for people who can't afford the good life. It's just a horrid story, given that the first line is: "Le bébé est mort." (The baby is dead.) It's well-written, though. 

Books #84 and 85 are ones I've read every year for a while, Savor, by Shauna Niequist and You are the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen. 

I think that's it for this year, though I'm in the middle of a couple of books, so the first update of the new year is probably coming soon. I've already mentioned in this post that I'd like to read fewer forgettable books in 2025. I did read a lot of good stuff (see below), but there were quite a few I wouldn't even know I'd read if I hadn't posted about them. I'd also like to read more paper books. Practically everything I've read this year has been on my Kindle. I like reading on my Kindle, but I'm accumulating paper books that I just never pick up. Yes, in spite of vowing not to buy more books, I have bought more than intended. It's a sickness. But I'm not ever again going to reach the enormous number of books we had in Haiti. At least, that's my resolution. 

Here's the rest of what I read this year. 

Books #1-6

Books #7-12 

Books #13-20

Books #21-26 

Books #27-32

Books #33-47 

Books #48-60

Books #61-72 

SJT and Poetry Friday: Wintering

This month's SJT theme, from our host Kim, is Wintering. I read Katherine May's book by that title last year. In the book, winter is a metaphor for difficult times (it's there in the subtitle, "The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times"), but it's also a literal season. Katherine May hibernates, reads differently from the way she does in summer, and even swims in icy cold water. Here's a quote from the book: "However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful. Yet it’s also inevitable. We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves. We dream of an equatorial habitat, forever close to the sun, an endless, unvarying high season."  

 

I only have one problem with the book. While I appreciate a good metaphor, and I love thinking about seasons and vicariously enjoying them through friends' postings on social media, I live near to the equator, in Kampala, Uganda. I really do have that "equatorial habitat" of the quote. I reflected on this back in 2019 from another tropical home. It's not that there aren't seasons, but winter really isn't one of them. Right now it's the rainy season, and I bundle up in a cardigan every morning, but today there was a high of 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius), so it wasn't exactly cold. (Even if it were, I assure you that I would not swim in icy water like Katherine May.) When you live in the tropics, sadness and melancholy, as well as joy and delight, are accompanied by bright blue skies and warm temperatures. Life isn’t a constant beach vacation, wherever you live. The equator, that nearby imaginary line, doesn’t cross out grief; every part of the planet is filled with people who feel all the same emotions, whatever the weather. You have to find a different metaphor here, because winter isn’t coming. Still, as the book suggests, I need to rest, be kind to myself, recognize that my energy fluctuates and take a break. That's why I put aside the ninth grade exams I was grading and worked on this post instead. I decided to write a haibun, using some winter photos sent by friends from the US earlier this week.

 

Photo Credit: Matsu

Wintering

How surprised and shocked we’d be if a sudden snowfall covered our bougainvillea and our jacaranda tree, here in our tropical garden! Friends seven thousand miles away sent photos of how it looks when seasons clash, chilling bright blooms. So tonight we’ll hibernate in spirit, looking at the cold they have shared with us, who don’t have our own. We’ll drink hot tea, imagining that bare feet on the cool tile floor are actually freezing. We’ll turn on a fan and sleep under a blanket.

Snow engulfs roses
In a garden far away
A borrowed winter  

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Our Poetry Friday roundup this week will be at Carol's place.

Poetry Friday: My world, your world, our world, and Roundup

Welcome to Poetry Friday! I'm happy to be hosting you from Kampala, Uganda. Today I am using the November SJT (Spiritual Journey Thursday) prompt. SJT is supposed to be the first Thursday of the month; I am therefore over two weeks late in responding. This month's prompt came from Linda Mitchell and it was "My world, your world, our world." I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing it for my hosting gig. Share your world with us by leaving your link in the comments. I'm on East African Time, and it may take me a minute to get to the rounding up part, but I'll do it (the old-fashioned way) as fast as I can. I have comment moderation enabled, so you won't see your comment immediately. And finally, I have had quite a few complaints lately that people aren't able to comment. I apologize in advance if that happens to you. If you have my email address (I know that many Poetry Friday friends do), you can email me and I'll put up your link.

We all live in the same world, right? No, we really don't. Even if we are from a similar background and live on the same street, the way we experience our daily life may be completely different. And if we live in different countries, or have different pasts, or different immigration status, or even if I slept well last night and you were up with a screaming baby, we may have almost no commonalities between us. This can cause problems. We may find it hard to relate to people whose worlds hardly overlap with our own. People in the US got a reminder earlier this month of how different our worlds are, as voters on both sides wondered: how could half of the country think in a way so diametrically opposed to the way I do?

 

But being from different worlds can also be a source of great richness and beauty. One of the reasons I love reading a good novel is that it can draw me into the world of a character who isn't like me. It takes me out of my own head and helps me see in a new way. And in our relationships, we can share our worlds with others. My husband and I grew up in two different countries. Throughout our long marriage, we have shared elements of the cultures that informed our upbringing, as well as sharing the worlds where we've lived together (like Haiti, whose horrendous suffering we continue to watch, but from a distance now). Many years ago, I got to visit the country where he lived as a child. And at the beginning of this month, he finally got to visit mine. I took the photo at my childhood school in Kenya. I'm so thankful to have it as one of the places I love, and I'm so thankful that I've spent time on five continents, and seen many of the worlds on our great big planet.

 

My world, your world, our world

There’s just one spot on this earth
That saw the moment of my birth.
But I love so many places,
Take joy in so many faces.
My favorite? Don’t make me choose.
There isn’t one I want to lose.
The sky looks down from way up there
On my worlds, your worlds, ours to share.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey
 

Good Friday morning from a very rainy Kampala! One post came in when it was still Thursday, and then others overnight, so I'm starting the day by starting the roundup while it's still dark.

Linda, the source of today's prompt, got here first, and she is sharing a new book by Maria Popova called The Universe in Verse. It looks gorgeous, and Linda gives us a sample page about an octopus and living "wonder-smitten." Plus she has her own poem in response! 

Jama also has a new book for us, this one a picture book called Grand Old Oak and the Birthday Ball. The post isn't there yet, so I'll be going back later to check it out! 

Robyn has two fun poems in a new anthology, Clara’s Kooky Compendium of Thimblethoughts and Wonderfuzz, and she shares them with us. They are both full of wordplay and would be great to read with kids!

Tabatha has a Wendy Cope poem for us. Although I'm in hasty roundup mode, I had to click through and read the rest of it, and I was glad I had! 

Alan is reading a Billy Collins anthology of short poems called Musical Tables. (I don't know if it's new, but I haven't heard of it before -- I definitely want to check it out!) As if that wasn't enough, Alan also shares three of his own terrific short poems!

Jone knows that I always have trouble getting on her blog from my Ugandan network. Her comment and email both came through fine, but the link she sent doesn't take me anywhere. It will work for you, though! It looks as though she has some invitations today, and I sure wish I could see them!

Karen has a Rudy Francisco poem for us in video form. I can't wait to go back and watch it after I get done rounding up!

Matt is going to NCTE! I'm jealous, but then I'm not even an English teacher any more. He shares a video compilation of poems from Irene Latham and Charles Waters' anthology, The Mistakes that Made Us. It looks so good -- I can't wait to read it!

Well, I'm in my classroom now, and between the last paragraph and this one, there was some drama. It's not even seven yet, and I usually wouldn't be at school for about twenty more minutes, but my husband is going with some students on a little photography trip. In addition to our campus here in the city, we have some land called the Lakeside Campus. As its name suggests, it's right on Lake Victoria. Right now there isn't much on it in the way of buildings, but there are plans! Some students are going down to take pictures of it today for a calendar. I can't go because I have a very busy day in my classroom. We stopped on the way to school to get breakfast for everyone, and as we were pulling out from the bakery, in the rain with no visibility, my husband drove the car right into one of the deep and treacherous Kampala ditches. Our little car was immobilized, with the left front wheel deep in the ditch and the right back wheel at least a foot off of the ground. There was an enormous bang when we went down, so I was sure the car was also damaged. I climbed out the driver's side and my husband phoned for help, but before our colleague got there, a friendly stranger stopped and, with the help of several guys in rain gear, pushed us out. Our tough little RAV4 was fine and we went on our way. I've imagined going into one of those ditches since the first time I saw them, and now it has happened! 

Tiel Aisha Ansara doesn't post on Poetry Friday, but I love her poetry blog, and I have a tradition of linking to her every time I host. Her most recent posting is a wonderful bird poem, so you know I can't resist that, but I also have to link to "In Praise of Rain," given the weather conditions where I am this morning.

Carol has been doing Haiku for Healing, and she has several lovely haiku for us, paired with photos. Welcome, Carol!

Amy has a story poem about starting over and some advice about writing in the third person. I appreciated the very concrete event and the metaphor.

Rose is saying goodbye to autumn with a list poem packed with sensory details. I loved the mentor text she used, and Rose's poem makes a great mentor text, too! 

Irene wrote about a beautiful 20th century painting and found a poem about how it feels when a loved one comes back home. What a great feeling! 

Heidi, like me, is sad about missing NCTE, and she wrote a poem about it called "Beyond FOMO." There's always next year! 

Patricia is sharing a poem about madly searching for lost things. 

And now I'm waking up on Saturday morning. It's raining again. A few links came in overnight.

 

Molly is "kindling the light with small poems." She also has some of her gorgeous photography to go along with the poems. These are good ways to approach the darkness.

Carol has had a tough week, and she shares how she's coping. And one of those ways is with a sweet, fruity poem.

Margaret is reading and writing with her students. She's written an evocative poem about her place in the world, and she shares another by a sixth grader. Wow! I always love reading Margaret's students' work, and this one is remarkable.

Reading Update

Book #61 of the year was Amor Towles' short story collection Table for Two. I like his novels better, but there were some enjoyable stories here.

Book #62 was The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah. I was fascinated by the portrayal of what it's like to live in rural Alaska.

Book #63 was The Identicals, by Elin Hilderbrand, a story of twins living on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

Book #64 was Family Family by Laurie Frankel. An author's note says that Frankel wrote this to demonstrate that adoption isn't a second choice or something you settle for, but a beautiful way to make a family. I am paraphrasing because my library copy has disappeared off my Kindle already. I found this book very entertaining.

Book #65 was The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley. This was a time travel story in which I thought I knew exactly what was going on, until suddenly everything changed and I had to reevaluate everything. I love it when an author pulls that off. 

Book #66 was Real Americans, by Rachel Khong. I enjoyed this one a lot, too -- it asked interesting questions about nature and nurture.

Book #67 was Prince Across the Water, by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris. This was a historical novel about the events around the Battle of Culloden in Scotland. It was written for children, but I found it held my attention all the way through.

Book #68 was a re-read, Learning to Walk in the Dark, by Barbara Brown Taylor. I've blogged about it a lot before, including here.

Book #69 was Sandwich, by Catherine Newman. I find myself gravitating these days to books about people with adult children (I wonder why), and this was one such book. It was absorbing and thought-provoking.

Book #70 was One True Loves, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The love of Emma's life disappears, and she finally moves on and gets engaged to someone else; then her first husband reappears. (This happens in the first chapter, so it isn't a spoiler.) What should Emma do?

Book #71 was The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods. I read this with my book club because one of us found it at a library sale for $1. We didn't enjoy it much, though our conversations about it were still great fun.

Book #72 was Rock Paper Scissors, by Alice Feeney. This wasn't at all my kind of book, being a suspenseful story where people are all lying to each other. I did like how the author pulled a twist I didn't see coming.

Poetry Friday: Birdtober 2024

Here are links to all the Birdtober poems I wrote in October. It was fun! I hope to do it again next year!

 

Day 1: Plush-crested Jay

Day 2: American Robin

Day 3: Mountain Bluebird

Day 4: Giant Kingfisher 

Day 5: Eastern Plantain-Eater 

Day 6: Red-winged Blackbird 

Day 7: Cardinals 

Day 8: Black-headed Heron 

Day 9: Gray Crowned-Crane 

Day 10: Speckled Mousebird

Day 11: Golden Swallow

Day 12: Red-billed Firefinch

Day 13: House Wren 

Day 14: White-necked Crow

Day 15: Red-headed Woodpecker

Day 16: Red-eyed Dove

Day 17: Rüppell's Starling

Day 18: House Sparrow

Day 19: Pink-backed Pelican

Day 20: Abyssinian Ground-Hornbill 

Day 21: Vervain Hummingbird

Day 22: Green Jay 

Day 23: Painted Bunting

Day 24: American Goldfinch

Day 25: Cedar Waxwing 

Day 26: Red-tailed Hawk 

Day 27: Striped Kingfisher 

Day 28: Mosque Swallow 

Day 29: Roseate Spoonbill 

Day 30: African Green-Pigeon 

Day 31: African Wood-Owl 

 

 

Patricia has today's roundup. 

Birdtober Day Thirty-One: African Wood-Owl

Day 31. I could write about a Burrowing Owl, which I've seen and loved, but I decided instead to write about the owl in my own yard here in Kampala. I mostly hear this species, but I've also seen it, in the Botanical Garden in Entebbe. 

Photo Source: eBird.com

Awake, 2 AM

Hoots menacing, comforting

You're awake too, owl

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Birdtober Day Thirty: African Green-Pigeon

I love green birds. There's something so tropical about them. I haven't seen this species in a while, but I really enjoy them.  In the past I've seen them at school more than once. Listen to their sounds in the video below. (Bonus: there's also a Red-eyed Dove calling, starting halfway through the video; you can read about those sounds here.)

Photo Source: eBird.com

 

African Green-Pigeon

 

You are cute beyond belief;
Green, but noisier than a leaf.
Bluish eye and purple wing,
And that growly, cackly way you sing! 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

One more day of Birdtober! See you tomorrow! 

Birdtober Day Twenty-Nine: Roseate Spoonbill

 Photo Source: eBird.com

Roseate Spoonbill

Bird of cotton candy pink.
bending down to get a drink,
using your bill like tongs in salad
and singing your weird, croaky ballad:
Milliners once sought your feathers,
but now your birdy get-togethers
are safe and calm; you may seek fish,
mollusks, crustaceans, what you wish.
You won’t be made into a hat,
and we can all be glad of that.

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Birdtober Day Twenty-Eight: Mosque Swallow

I had really hoped to see a Mosque Swallow during our recent trip to Lake Mburo because it was one of the likely birds listed. Unfortunately, I did not see one. 

 

 A page from Birds of East Africa

I found this poem called "Masjid/Mosque," by Urdu poet Akhtar ul Iman. There's a swallow in the poem: 

Or a swallow, at the approach of winter,

Seeks the mosque out for making its nest;

And curling up for hours in the broken arch

Tells the story of cold countries.

The mosque in this poem is abandoned, and no longer used for worship. That fits with the Mosque Swallow, which, according to what I've read, prefers abandoned buildings if it chooses to nest in a building. It also likes hollow trees, particularly baobab trees. But the swallow in the poem can't be a Mosque Swallow, because they don't migrate from cold countries, though they sometimes move around based on where it is raining. I am starting to think, after mostly unsuccessfully hunting for references to swallows in mosques, that the name comes from an attempt to place these swallows geographically, since they are found in Africa and Asia, often in areas where mosques would be frequent. Swallows in general do have a reputation for nesting around humans, hence the name Barn Swallow. There's a reference in Psalm 84 to a swallow nesting in the temple: "Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young - a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you" (Psalm 84:3-4).

Mosque Swallow

The swallow
has found
a home
in the abandoned
mosque.
She swoops
and
soars
to catch
termites,
makes
a chewed
clump of bugs
for her babies,
waiting for her
in their nest
of mud.
Blessed,
blessed
is she.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Birdtober Day Twenty-Seven: Striped Kingfisher

Today's calendar says "Artist's Choice," meaning that I have to choose what bird to write about. There are so many I could have picked. I decided I wanted to write about one of the lifers (birds seen for the first time) I've had this month. We have a week off in October, and my husband and I went to Lake Mburo, in Western Uganda. There are many species in that part of the country that we don't have here, and during that trip I got fifteen lifers. They were all exciting, but I decided to write about the Striped Kingfisher. On the 4th I told you that I had seen nine different kingfisher species (in three countries). While at Lake Mburo I saw my tenth! It was the Striped Kingfisher.

Photo Source: eBird.com

Striped Kingfisher
Halcyon chelicuti


Halcyon bird
of blue and brown,
my Kingfisher species
number ten:
welcome to my list
of treasures.
Outsiders found you in 1814
in Chelicut, Ethiopia,
but you’d been around long before.
They added you to their list
of treasures.
I found you in 2024,
when the guide pointed up at you
where you watched, impassive,
from your tree.
I know you don’t care,
but I sure enjoyed
seeing and hearing you,
Striped Kingfisher.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

Here are the ten kingfisher species on my life list:

 

Belted Kingfisher - US

Ringed Kingfisher - Paraguay

Amazon Kingfisher - Paraguay

Green Kingfisher - Paraguay

Pied Kingfisher - Uganda

Woodland Kingfisher - Uganda

Malachite Kingfisher - Uganda

African Pygmy Kingfisher - Uganda

Giant Kingfisher - Uganda

Striped Kingfisher - Uganda 

Birdtober Day Twenty-Six: Red-tailed Hawk

I'll never forget the day I first saw a Red-tailed Hawk. In Haiti they call them Malfini, though a bit of Googling suggests that the Malfini is used in other places for the Broad-winged Hawk. We were out hiking in February of 2020, and we met a man who offered to show us a nest. I thought he meant a Palmchat nest, because I had been asking him questions about one of those, but when after a little bit of a walk he pointed upwards, an enormous head appeared in my binoculars' viewfinder. For a moment I thought there was something wrong with my eyes, since the head was so very much larger than what I had been expecting to see. And then a few minutes later, the bird I had seen and its mate whooshed down at us because we had come too close. Our guide introduced us to his employer, who lived in a house right nearby. We were invited in for mint tea, and our host teared up when he told us that the Red-tailed Hawk nesting within sight of his home was the best thing that had happened to him that year. The whole experience felt magical to my husband and me. It was one of the best things that happened to us that year. 

Protective parents
Dive-bomb human intruders
Screeching warningly 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day Twenty-Five: Cedar Waxwing

Here are my Birdtober posts so far:

 

Week 1 (October 1-4): (Plush-crested Jay, American Robin, Mountain Bluebird, Giant Kingfisher)

Week 2 (October 5 - 10): (Eastern Plantain-eater, Red-winged Blackbird, Cardinals, Black-headed Heron, Gray Crowned-Crane, Speckled Mousebird)

Week 3 (October 11-18): (Red-billed Firefinch, House Wren, White-necked Crow, Red-headed Woodpecker, Red-eyed Dove, Rüppell's Starling, House Sparrow)

Week 4:

Day 19: Pink-backed Pelican

Day 20: Abyssinian Ground-Hornbill 

Day 21: Vervain Hummingbird

Day 22: Green Jay 

Day 23: Painted Bunting

Day 24: American Goldfinch 

At most of these links you can find the prompts I'm using. 

 

Today's bird is the Cedar Waxwing. I've seen them eight times, in South Dakota, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They are such lovely birds. 

Photo Source: eBird.com

Cedar Waxwing

The natty Cedar Waxwings,
while always quite well-dressed
sometimes steal other birds’ supplies
when building a new nest.

They eat so much delicious fruit
that they get drunk on lunch
but also dine on flowers
or a bug or two to crunch.

They give small gifts while courting
and hang out after snacks.
They’re dapper in appearance,
with wings tipped, bright, with wax.

Disreputable bandits
yet charming, friendly fellows:
natty Cedar Waxwings
in grays and browns and yellows. 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

Come back next week for links to all my 2024 Birdtober posts!  Carol has this week's roundup.