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it's not always easy being a birdwatcher. you need to have patience. good observation skills. keen hearing. and sometimes you have to wake up crazy early, because that's when the birds are out. i woke up at 6:00 to bike down to the mt.auburn cemetery for the rite of spring passage known as waking up early to see the migrating birds. i saw: baltimore orioles, cooper's hawk, downy woodpecker, grackles, robins, bluejays, cardinals, nuthatches, palm warblers, pine warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, black-and-white warblers, blue-headed vireos, chipping sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, and purple finch. i separated from the group around 8:30 to revisit some of the previous sites to see if i could get some bird photos, but either i didn't have the patience to find them myself or the birds were all gone.

today was warm enough that i changed into some shorts when i got back home, a first this year. i also did some work in my community garden (turned my plot)...

it was dirty work, with hair in my face and sweat mixed with soil dust. i cleared out the carpet of ground ivy that seems to reemerge every spring, making sure to shake out as much dirt as possible. all my snapdragons are dead, but i have several patches of green shasta daisies. there are also a few delphiniums (assuming they survived the winter) but they haven't emerged yet so i left the area untouched where i thought i planted them. finally, the few sprigs of milkweeds are poking out again. last year they were newly transplanted and had to compete with rampant asiatic dayflowers and then eclipsed by bigger plants. hopefully this season they take advantage of their early emerging and grow big enough to compete with the other plants.

...as well as in belmont1 (i brought out the hose, planted a row of fennels, and helped my father repot a jasmine plant & rinse off the mealybugs that accumulated indoors during the winter). it goes without saying i'm pretty tired. i'm going to sleep early tonight, maybe revisit mt.auburn cemetery later in the week, hopefully with more birds.


1 stopped at the intersection of fresh pond parkway and huron avenue, i spotted the google car again. this could be my 2nd chance at getting on google map!