Up early and what a racket!

Sunday morning. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

One of the ways life changes with age is the diminishing capacity for sleep. (Note: I am not saying need for sleep, just capacity. Big difference.) That diminishing capacity means wakefulness during hours, that, in youth, I would have been thoughtlessly enjoying sleep. That diminishing capacity also means that, that same wakefulness blesses me with the gradual noise of early mornings.

The 3 a.m. quiet, with cat sitting at an open window. Me at my laptop, checking email and newspapers. Then an increasing racketing of bird song, so that by 5 a.m.-ish the world outside is a symphony of chirps and calls. (Cat has abandoned window by this point and is snoozing in his basket.)

It's prime bird time and I would not be alive to it were it not for the fact that I can't sleep. I think there is some irony involved here. Birds are wide awake, but that's because it's their job.

Anyway, I love the before-dawn chorus. It really is a racket, and I can hear layers of songs, some close, others a bit farther away.

As an aside, one night last week I watched swallows dipping and diving in the 5 p.m.-ish sky, near my Mom's house, chasing after bugs for their evening meal. They are pretty birds. Glad I noticed, but could not help but wonder what a small number of them were flitting about.

Pretty sky in Pittsburgh this morning, too.

Of Oz and Wonderland

With apologies to Lewis Carroll

"All in a gloomy afternoon
Full fearfully we hide ..."

I found the Mad Hatter's chapeau in my driveway this morning, perhaps flung there by the Queen of Hearts. Or to claim a Wizard of Oz metaphor, dropped there like a house by a tornado.

(What? Oh, sorry. Back to Wonderland. Hatter interruptus.)

I like to think that the Hatter, the March Hare and Alice are continuing on with their very mad tea party this evening. Because, really, how else can one deal with this ridiculous February weather?

Besides going down a rabbit hole, I mean.