THE FIRST BLACKBERRY

We've been squinting into the morning light at the ripening blackberries outside our east bedroom window these past few days. And talking about which day the first one might be ready. It was today!

Kiddo picked it and ate it just before we hopped on the bike to go to daycare. "I love blackberries" he said.

On the lovely bike ride we passed a baby scrub jay begging for food by arching its wings and calling from a wire. A beautiful striped hawk glided overhead and into a tall liquid amber tree in someone's front yard. And we saw and heard a little Phoebe flit across our path.

I'm curious about phoebes. I've heard they go nest by water (the river) in summer and I do notice they return to our yard in autumn. But recently I've seen two in the neighborhood.

We still sing the bird song we made up. It started as an actual description of things we saw in our backyard and expanded to things we see at the river and now includes a GOOFY version per kiddos request. Almost all the birds in the song are ones kiddo can recognize. He's so good!

Also my sweet man brought home two feathers for me to guess this week. He took me out onto the front porch in the bright evening sun so I could see how iridescent they were. They were like a black rainbow in the sun. Black, but a rainbow of gem colors over it.

After a minute where I sort of considered crow, but thought they were too small and too iridescent, I said "MAGPIE". And he said Right!

Here's our bird song:

There's a kinglet in the kumquat

There's a finch in the fig (-in the car- in the goofy version).

There's a towhee near the toadstool

Scratch scratch scratch

Cheep cheep cheep

Hummingbird tickles Milo's ear

Crow's calling from the tree (-kitchen- in the goofy version)

Now hawk is on the wing

Shh shh shh

Shh shh shh

Mockingbird nests in May (-in dada's shoe- in the goofy version)

Phoebe returns in autumn

Big blue scrub jay eating acorns

Crunch crunch crunch

Chomp chomp chomp

Egret tiptoes in the shallows

Ducks dive by the log (bathtub per goofy version)

Geese fly overhead

Honk honk honk

Quack quack quack

(the the next verse is 100% goofy version and rather than born from something we saw, born from kiddo's love of the parrot page in Sibley's)

Parrot's eating pizza

Quails drinking water (wearing a vest in Mama's version, but kiddo wanted drinking water)

Macaw drinking milk

And Magpies snoozing in their nest.

We're looking to add the kingfisher and acorn woodpecker who we routinely see at the river to the song. Future verses forthcoming!