Blur - To the End (Live at Alexandra Palace 1994)

 

 I love this song. I've been listening to the Parklife album today, and Blur is one of those bands I so wish I had seen.

Whippoorwills

When we first moved to Windy Poplars Farm in 1981, we heard whippoorwills. This continued for a few years, and then we didn't hear them. I looked back in my emails, and found a few correspondences with the state Audubon Society. In 2002, I found an email I had sent, saying we hadn't heard them in maybe 15 years. The response was essentially that they didn't know. Some had thought change of habitat or decline in moths, but no one knew for sure. I also found an article from a state newspaper around the same time despairing the fact that they just weren't around.  A few years later, we drove north an hour or so, and participated in an Audubon study to see if we heard any whippoorwills. We drove around to several promising spots, but heard nothing. Flash ahead to 2013, and they were here. Again in 2018, they appeared. When I wrote to Audubon, they said there were several people who had also heard them! I have a note that I heard it in 2019. And then an Audubon publication from last year says they are doing well in certain areas of the state. I can certainly attest to that this year! Without fail, for weeks now the whippoorwill has appeared just outside the house. It has been on the roof, in the lilac, and on the terrace. It comes at dusk and dawn. It feels like such an honor. I do have a movie of it, but I haven't been able to put any of my videos on the blog for a long time. You may hear their sound here.

photograph from Cornell Labs.

There is a terrific new article in The Old Farmer's Almanac, here. They quoted Thoreau:

It could mean many things, according to the wealth of myth surrounding this night flyer. The note of the whippoorwill borne over the fields is the voice with which the woods and moonlight woo me.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)