The Kites are Coming!

Actually, as I write (May 7, 2019 10:15 a.m.) , the Mississippi Kites are returning to Weatherford, Oklahoma.  There were 8 circling high as I was walking home from the dentist-- not sure if they are staying or traveling on north.

This is the latest they have arrived in the 9 years I have been watching.  I saw one while hiking in the Wichita Mountains (south of here) on Saturday, and may have seen one, alone, yesterday morning, but the flock is soaring in now.

Cranes?

A flock heading north flew over at 12:45 p.m. today (February 25).  They sounded like cranes; close and loud and yet nearly invisible in the bright midday sky.

Painted Bunting

I saw a painted bunting in my back yard May 17.  I had never knowingly seen one before and had no idea why this green leaf seemed to be following a red-breasted bird around.

Herons and more

I have seen my "spirit animal", the great blue heron, a great deal recently.

It makes me feel like my life is on the right track, even if so much else isn't.

Wildlife adventure before even putting in the boats

Besides a heron that didn't stay around for a photo, and a great egret, on Cane Bayou May 18 we saw a diamondback watersnake eating a catfish, eyes of several alligators, a gray snake in a tree, a cricket toe in the kayak smaller than the Mister's toe, a green tree frog, several red eared sliders and possibly some other turtles, a squirrel that didn't move (in a tree, mid-day.  We stayed away from that squirrel), a parent osprey feeding two chicks, and a dragonfly that ate a damselfly while I was explaining the difference to the other groups.  While out with the excellent Canoe and Trail Adventures (Canoeandtrail.com-- source of these photos) we also heard bronze frogs and pig frogs that we did not see.  Our guide told us we might see a Mississippi Kite soaring if we were lucky, but we certainly wouldn't be so lucky as to see one perched.  And in Louisiana we didn't see any, but we must be really lucky in our small town in Oklahoma, for there seem to be even more patrolling our skies this summer.

Cricket Frog. Not The Mister's foot.
Canoeandtrail.com photo

While I'm listing birds, I should add that on the recent trip to Kansas, besides the herons, we saw eastern kingbirds (lots of westerns here in Oklahoma, along with scissortailed flycatchers), large families of Canada geese with goslings of different ages, shrikes, hummingbirds, cardinals, blue jays, hawks (mostly red-tailed), cattle egrets, nighthawks, bluebirds, house finches, gold finches and oriels.

My shins (only) sunburned.  They are peeling now.

OSPREY BABIES!

Witty watching caption goes here.
Photo also by Canoe and Trail Adventures.

Ashes and the Anomalous Spring

I've attended the Ash Wednesday service at my local church the last three years and I love it, despite, or perhaps because, the very idea of a cross of ashes feels so foreign and mystical (and really, Catholic) compared to the very stripped-down pragmatic Protestant nature of my family and the churches we have attended (just about the same thing I said two years ago).

Daring iris that bloomed Feb. 24 in 2013
became covered in ice

This year the the service was not the same solemn connection to the dark ground that it was the previous two, perhaps because there were more people and the lights were on, perhaps because the boys had helped make the ashes on Sunday (last year's palm Sunday palms) and I have become good enough friends with several pastors to know that they all have stories of nearly burning down a church and make bad ash puns, but really it was because the season is wrong.

Lent should start in the winter.  All is reduced to ashes we are dead in the ground.

And we wait and anticipate and suffer through the lean times and then Spring!  Easter!  Holy rebirth!

But here now it is already spring.  Like most of the southern half of the country, the Early Leaf Index Anomaly Map has signs of spring showing up here nearly 20 days early (See the map here).   I took my students to a local wildlife refuge to see waterfowl-- ducks and geese on Feb. 10.  It was over 80 degrees with a hot south wind and the birds had never made it that far south.

Last Wednesday, Feb. 22, the first ornamental Prunus was blooming on my way to school.
By Thursday, Feb. 23, when I arrived in Tulsa for a conference, the Bradford pears were in full bloom.
When I returned home on Friday, Feb. 24, the Bradford pear nearest me was half open.  The east facing daffodils along my house were in full bloom and the south facing daffodils were past (they apparently had opened on Feb. 12). The roses on the west side of my house had leaves and even the lilac on the north side had buds bursting on Friday, Feb. 24,

My little bulb iris are blooming their little purple heads off in deep leaf litter that I have not taken the time to remove, nor do I want to unless spring is really here.

Today, March 1,  I heard the first mockingbird singing (I saw some around yesterday),

Sometimes its hard to remember that we are dust in the earth when the joyful songs are already being sung.

Bastila: February Transition Pie

Mister Splashy Pants is seen here awaiting the four and twenty blackbirds she hopes will emerge from the pie.

Unfortunately for Mister Splashy Pants, the chickens who gave their thighs for the pie are long gone, and, a few days later, so was all of the bastila, with none left for her.  Poor cat received none of the bird pie.

According to Paula Wolfert, who is sometimes annoying with her academic informative instructions (e.g. there are times when I want a recipe for lamb tagine, not to understand the origins and provenance of sixteen different recipes for lamb tagine), but who is very informative none the less, bastila is also written pastila, bisteeya, and bestela.

I followed Paula's recipe for "Bastila of Fez with Chicken" fairly closely-- including making a batter a day in advance and attempting to make thin warqa pastry rather than using commercial phyllo (fillo).  To make warqa by this method, one much use two different kinds of brushes: silicone for oil and natural bristle for spreading a film of batter into the make-shift double boiler.  It actually works (you can see a layer in front of the cookbook below) but once I added up the 2 minutes per layer and subtracted those that weren't full circles, I finished thawing the phyllo.  The final pie included six chicken thighs, nine eggs, lots of almonds and lots of spices.  I flipped the whole thing twice so the outer layer was browned and crispy and there was not a soggy bottom in sight.

Warqa cooking in a make-shift double boiler.

I'm rather impressed with myself for seeing all the steps through, not deviating from the recipe, and finally making a bird pie.  As I was making it, I was also feeling thankful for The Mister and Aster and Dianthus, for whom cooking is fun; the cookbook, Foods of Morrocco, a gift from my BiL and SiL; and the cookbook rack, a gift from my B and my SiL. As I was mulling how great it was that I had parents who introduced me to Moroccan food while I was young (among many other cuisines), I started thinking about Paula Wolfert and her struggles with Alzheimer's, which made me very sad.  I'll admit that I wasn't particularly sad for Paula*, as I don't know her and she seems to be ending her life in a way that she chose while she had a chance.  It made me sad that someday my mother won't be around and then with whom will I discuss cooking-based pop culture?  Or if I'm not around, with whom will my mom discuss Paula Wolfert's last cookbook?  They never tell you that a great downside of sharing interests with your parents is that you will become friends and then someday you will lose a parent (or an adult child) and the only other person you know who discusses personalities and love lives of cookbook authors.  They never tell you that a downside of being an over-thinking sensitive person, just like your parents, is that you will find yourself struggling to make lemony egg curds in the reduced spiced poaching liquid, yourself reduced to an emotional wreck because someday you won't have someone to call up and chat about a cook.  It is probably telling that my response to the emotional outpouring was not to call my mother and thank her for being my friend (thanks Mom!), as she was out to eat anyway (yes, Dad, you spoil her.  But she spoils you too.), but to contemplate who I can convince to follow food world gossip.  Any takers?

*Sure, I'm on a first name basis with lots of people I will never meet, including several cookbook authors.

Feeling a little less like Nero

Fire and Ice Punch Groundhog Party 2017 (CLP Photo)

CLP Photo

As the political situation in the US has done its thing recently (how I hope that sometime in the future I can look back on this and really have no idea to what I am referring), I've spent far too much time reading on-line late into the evening (how I hope that I'm just getting biased fake news, but I've watched whole speeches and I've read the transcripts released by the White House and I've looked for the missing IDEA web pages and, of course, I have seen the Mauna Loa data) and have proceeded to plan a Groundhog "Fire and Ice" party, meet with a student person trainer about lifting weights, and get all excited about another hair-do for adult prom.  I've been cooking from cookbooks, planning summer travels, sledding, going to the zoo, and deciding on special foods to eat with grains of paradise on Valentine's Day.  I watched the first robins arrive (I noticed a bunch perhaps Tuesday morning? Feb. 14), the first crocus bloom (Feb. 10) and the first bulb iris (today, Feb. 19).

I've been having a good time.

Pin-the-shadow-on-the-groundhog Runner-Up

I've thought that maybe I feel like Nero, except he probably didn't rush his kids to Scouts and basketball.

Flamingos OKC Jan. 2017

But I've taken some steps to at least quit fanning the flames-- I rounded up some interest in a local school board election, promoted the Farmer's Market on Facebook and will be hosting my first pie baking workshop next week, with plans for future intergenerational interfaith discussions over baked goods at my church. Pie year: Sharing a Piece of Pie of Peace (or some similar pun).

I stand by kindness and nudges and good food.

Not sure what red dirt prairie dogs symbolize, but they make me laugh.

Bird Books, Birthed Book, and Some Others

A side benefit of letting the pile of books grow before sitting down and blogging about them is that I no longer remember what I had to say about most of them.  It makes catching up quicker, if considerably less meaningful.

I read a string of books in the fall that felt like absolutely the right book at the right time.  Stork by Wendy DeSol was chopped full of bird symbolism, included unexpectedly weird mythological fantasy, and was a fun read full of modern teenage angst and Starbucks marketing. The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney had me crying about the prevalence of sexual assault while longing to re-read To Kill a Mockingbird, which is directly references. Like those two, I think I picked up The Valley of the Moon by Melanie Gideon because it had a bird on the cover (and the moon, making it a glow year book) but I found the pro-botanical time travel book to be remarkable, if not as light as I anticipated.

I was reluctant to read A Book About Love by Jonah Lehrer that M sent me because somehow I couldn't see what there was left to say about love/was feeling pretty good about where I stand in loving relationships/have read a lot of well-written stuff concerning research into parenting, marriage, and happiness.  But then I started reading because I love my friends and I love receiving books and suddenly this one resonated.  I'm still unsure how to decode messages God and the Universe send through the books I read, but feel fairly certain I received a message there.

Speaking about books about love, Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch was great fun, or at least as much fun as a reasonably sensitive book about being sixteen and raised by a single mother who just died can be.  The characters eat a lot in Italy, which made me like them (people go to Italy for many reasons, but there are two reasons they stay: love and gelato), and they did things that just made me feel old.  The teenage narrator reads through her mother's notebooks, and finds her mother's thoughts when she (the mother) received e-mails from admissions in study abroad programs long before the narrator was born.  I bristled at the author for such a blatant anachronism-- until I realized that the book was published this year so the dead mother was studying abroad in 1997 or so.  She certainly could have received an e-mail.  And I know she is fictional, but I still found it disturbing to be older than the now dead mother.

Speaking about gift books, Wonder by R.J. Palacio is great, if it captures 5th and 9th grade a bit too well.  I'm closing bird year out with great gifts  The Big Year and Chicken (with library books Goldfinch and The Nightingale also on the pile).

I should also shout out Birthed: Finding Grace through Infertility by Elizabeth Evans Hagan (more information here) and After the Crown by K.B. Wagers.  The books have the common trait of being very-well done and having been written by someone I know.  And not much else, but both are good.

I just remembered There Will Be Bears which I also read, despite being about bears and not birds.

Poultry Fowl

Yep, "Poultry Fowl' is intended to be a pun on "party foul" but it doesn't really make sense.  It's the alternative title because I was afraid that the original, "Eating Birds" has some sexual connotation that I'm too naive to know about.

Turducken

During bird year, I have eaten chicken, cornish game hens, quail, goose, duck, pheasant, and turkey at home.  Almost all of these have been roasted by The Mister, who is both a great cook and a great companion.

Cranberry walnut, pumpkin, chocolate pecan and mincemeat

Here's the turducken breast he roasted in New Mexico for our "we're going to be away so we should keep it simple" four-pie Thanksgiving meal (A traditional (??) turducken is a whole chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey. We bought a product labeled as "turducken breast" which included lots of bacon in addition to meat from the three birds.
 Also pictured are the beer can duck being roasted (after having been dried for two days) on its way to becoming Peking Duck with little Mandarin pancakes and three new radishes I bought at the Asian grocer in Denver.

Peeking at the Peking Duck

Korean radish, Chinese daikon and Yuan radish, I believe.
The middle one was pithy but the other two types excellent

On Eagles

I need to get back to blogging-- we've had turducken, chicken lollipops, and Peking Duck; there are posts to be written about books concerning turkeys, infertility and love (yes M, I received the book and owe you many thanks and a bunch of correspondence); I've seen falcons, geese, hawks, and a flock of very little birds eating the seeds off my lawn during the current "icepacolypse"; and then there is a whole YA subgenre of books that reference "To Kill a Mockingbird" and I've read several.

I've been busy, bird wise and otherwise, but I've also avoided blogging because I simultaneously feel I must talk about politics and simultaneously I feel I don't have anything to say.  So maybe I'll talk about eagles.

Bald Eagles are a symbol of the country I live in and love.  They are magnificent birds and I have seen many in my adult life-- in and around waterways and forests in Colorado, California, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, British Columbia, and Alberta, and I'm pretty sure I saw one flapping against the wind as I drove past Mount Sunflower two weeks ago.  Eagles are scavengers.  Females are bigger than males.  Pairs return to the same nest year after year, adding sticks until a single nest can weigh over a ton.  And they normally don't kill their siblings*.  It takes them just a few months to go from fluff ball to awkward to soaring, yet several years to grow into their adult plumage.  They are fun birds to observe.

Most of the twenty-year-olds in my ecology class have seen a bald eagle in the wild, which wasn't the case when I was a college student back before they were born.  In the 1980s, eagle sighting were for serious bird-watchers or people who went to Alaska.  The recent abundance of eagles can be attributed to the banning of DDT and habitat protection following listing on the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (part of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which falls under the Department of the Interior, but much associated with the Environmental Protection Agency, which also came into being under the Nixon administration).  Based on information from the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota, banning lead shot in waterfowl has not reduced the percentage of eagles suffering from lead poisoning as much as anticipated, perhaps because eagles also scavenge from injured rodents and deer who can still be shot with lead (science, as it happens is a never ending process).  Bald Eagle populations have recovered so well that they were de-listed in 2007.

Oklahoma City Zoo, MLK Day 2017***

The recovery of the eagle population, like the air quality in Denver, which is much better than when I was growing up, despite several hundred thousand more people in the area, is due to science and legislation.  I know nobody with polio.  I have friends in mixed race marriages with beautiful children and friends who I karaoked** with in the late '90s who can finally legally care for each other in the hospital as a spouse.  Among the many worries I have as a parent of a child who was born a stroke survivor, I have not worried about being tied to a particular job because under some rules my son was uninsurable.  Had he been born ten years earlier I would have been****.  These are all due to convergences of science, technology, policy and legislation, compassionate decision making and someone's hard work.  Great things can happen when we work together.

Just as I am not being "anti" anything when I do my work job and talk about the correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature (despite what my snowball wielding senator might think), I am not being a whiny loser (despite what my President Elect might Tweet) when I do my citizen job and remind those elected to represent me that what they do matters.

Obviously, (I hope) what you do matters as well.  The country we want is not just up to our elected officials, It never has been. Like it or not, we're all in it, too.  Let's give it our best.

The bald eagles and all they represent will be on my mind as I march Saturday.

*Successful herons apparently routinely kill their siblings.  MB, I did not choose them as a symbol for that reason.

**I watched.

***Aster asked why this Eagle did not fly away at the zoo today.  I mentioned that only hurt eagles are in captivity and we read that this eagle was shot in the wing.  "Why would anyone shoot an eagle?" asked Aster.  I do not know.

****And yes, am again now.  And no, that the president-elect has told me not to be worried is really not reassuring.

Flocking Together

I was proctoring an all essay final on Monday when the silence was broken by honking geese somewhere in the distance.

I also heard the migration from inside while grading at night on Nov. 28 or 29th.

Out in the field in mid-November (probably the 11th) we kept hearing birds just over the tree tops.  I finally realized that it was a large flock very high in the sky.  My best guess is cranes, as they were definitely not geese.

Driving to New Mexico on Nov. 23, I encountered many lone raptors.  If it weren't such a preposterous suggestion, I would say that three of them were falcons.  Which would increase my lifetime wild falcons sightings by 300 percent.

As I was walking to work on Thursday, Dec. 1 a flock of canada geese flew low over the houses and there was a flash of white in their midst.  A snow goose among the canadas.

No, I don't know what that means.  Perhaps the one I saw last Dec. found some friends?

Wearing my heron on my sleeve and an owl around my neck

I really don't like doves.  Mourning doves, in fact, are probably my least favorite bird, and somehow it irks me that their ridiculous coo-ing bird-brained-ness is the symbol for peace.  I love hawks, but I'm already reminding Aster and Dianthus, "There are no winners in war," every time they pull out the army men.  I'm no hawk.

Several times this year I've thought about blogging about bird symbols, but have gotten mentally caught up with the dove/hawk thing, to which I've started to respond, "Well, I'm a heron."  Which is a pretty meaningless statement because being a heron on policy issues makes no sense.  But herons, great blue herons in particular, have resonated with me for twenty years.  I see them as good omens or spirit guides or just something personally special (Wow-- it appears I wrote the same thing 8 years ago).

I've been wanting to blog about the election, but I am still too angry.  I've been wearing one of my two owl necklaces daily to remind me of the wisdom of choosing my words well.  And I've been losing sleep composing this blog post.  As I finally sit to write it, I find that I still can't.

I'll just say what I told one of my classes on November 9.  "There are people in our community who are fearful following the results of the election.  I sincerely hope their fears are unfounded.  Whoever you voted or didn't vote for (because statistically, it 's likely you didn't vote), it is all of our job to make sure those fears don't have a basis.  If you live by Christian values, now is the time to demonstrate them."

Which gets us to the heron on my sleeve in the title.  By "heron on my sleeve" I meant "heart on my sleeve," because it is a little too easy to see how I feel about things (except that I always smile, so some people can't tell, so I have to pre-announce to one of my colleagues when I am cranky) and by "heart on my sleeve" I also meant "safety pin on my chest".  I've been wearing a safety pin prominently each day.  Safety pins are a signal that I am a safe space, that people can talk to me regardless of gender, religion, sexual orientation, race, size, and that I will get involved should someone be harassed for who they are.  In yet another way that our country is divided, my social media feed is largely "post-safety pin" including some circles safety pin wearers are being mocked for doing so little, and the students on my campus are largely oblivious that the movement exits.

But I'm wearing my safety pin with pride.  I've been in contact with my congressman. I will register as a Muslim if it comes to that.  I urge you to join me.  True, it's a symbolic gesture.  But so are lots of things.  And little symbolic gestures can add up.

 Like votes.

Herons are lovely and graceful.  And then they are move and they are gangly and clumsy and awkwardly proportioned.  And then they are flying and they are funny looking and inefficient, but they are flying.  They are still and hard to disturb and nearly inactive.  And then they are fast and sharp.

Bird Bingo in the Midst of a Glowing Season

Sun rise and sun sets have been phenomenal recently, and the trees in my town are just beginning to turn.  Despite plenty of turmoil around, I feel I'm in the midst of a long glowing season.

Aster and Texas Glowing in the Morning Light
BioBlitz 2016

BioBlitz was a lovely glow-y weekend in the middle of this.  We camped, ate well, taught people about invasive species and may have met our tribe (more on that someday), and, very importantly we saw birds: egrets, cormorants, vultures, herons, kingfishers, three types of woodpeckers, and osprey (which is more than the total of the last two BioBlitzes combined).  The boys played Bird Bingo twice. some bird trivia game once and we were on the winning team for BioBlitz jeopardy, where my knowledge or the state vegetable of Oklahoma (watermelon) and bird pop culture ("Just like Stevie Nicks, this bird goes ooh-ooh-ooh") came in handy.

Watch the birds and keep glowing.

Times, they are a changing

Last Wednesday morning (Aug. 24) the Mississippi Kites were circling the park in a great furor, as if drumming up support for the migration south.  Wednesday afternoon there were only two around the park and I figured the main flock had flown the town, as it were.

Thursday morning they were lined up in some nearby trees in bigger groups, and I've seen them congregating anti-socially-- in a long drawn out line on a power line, every day since*.

Aug. 17, 2016  Grades 2 and 0.

They have not left yet, at least they have not all left yet, but it seems obvious they are thinking about it.   Change is in the air.

Actually, ragweed is in the air, and we are all suffering from it.  And we are, more or less, all suffering from our change back to full routine with no naps.  But school started Aug. 17 for the boys and Aug. 22 for me.  Images of  last year and the year before (grades 0 and -2) and the year before that, should you want to see that they are growing up.  Somewhere around there's a picture of my new red shoes for 2013, which I still consider my new red shoes.

*ETA: Wed. Aug. 31 there were 60 of them lined up in one block at 7:45 this morning.  5 on one tree, 1 in another tree and the remaining 54 spaces about a meter apart on the power line.  Six more were one the lines on the next block.  This is not where you'll find Mississippi kites mid-summer.

Yes, my eyes were open when I took the photo,
33rd grade?  My 11th year of full time teaching.

Because nothing says "end of summer" like paying attention
to one's toenails for the first time since March.

Travel Lists 1-5

We've returned from the second of our summer trips, with lots to report.  In the unlikely event that you are into lists as much as I am, here are a few:

Nashville

States (15): Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, home. (Now Dianthus wants me to list all of the states he has been to.  It's 29).  Georgia and South Carolina were new to the prairie dog (who hadn't picked up a new state since Arizona in 2013) and me (nothing new since North Carolina and Tennessee in 2008).

Not everyone is excited by state capitol buildings.

Atlanta.  I've been taking capitol dome selfies
since before I had a double chin or a digital camera.

State Capitol Buildings: 3 (all new to me) Nashville, Atlanta and Columbia (other capitols seen, if at a distance: Little Rock, Columbus, Indianapolis, Topeka).  This would be great news for my family capitol competition (I haven't picked up a new one since Annapolis in 2010), if my parents hadn't had a four capitol run (Atlanta, Richmond, Dover, and Annapolis) on their simultaneous trip.

Inside Columbia,
where actual legislating was happening

National Parks: Mammoth Cave, Cumberland Gap, Congaree, and Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area. This represents no value out of our National Parks Interagency Pass, as Cumberland, Congaree and Seneca Rocks  were free and we paid for the fabulous Domes and Dripstones Guided Tour through Mammoth Cave.  We purchased the pass at Rocky Mountain last June 1, and in the thirteen months we had it, managed to hit Rocky Mountain three times, Dinosaur, Golden Spike, Glacier, Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Jewel Cave, Mt. Rushmore, Badlands, Capulin Volcano, White Sands, and Saguaro, in addition to those mentioned above.

Watching Frogs, Mammoth Cave National Park

Birds of Note: Whippoorwills, brown thrashers, brown pelicans*, anhingas*, barred owls* and great blue herons.

Other Animals of Note: turtles, frogs so loud they kept us up at night, lightning bugs, sting ray, horseshoe crab, luna moth, racoon, groundhogs (at which Dianthus shouts "marmot" when he spots one), many small lizards, a skink, newts (and salamanders and crawfish for the boys) and alligators.  Doesn't everyone go to Hilton Head for the wildlife?

*Birds new to my life list, if I had one.

Boy observing lizard

Luna Moth, Cave City, Kentucky

Lizard observing boy (just before fight with other lizard)

First alligator, the small one.

Medium Alligator.   Large alligator was much larger, much
closer and LOUD.  We did not hang around a take a photo.

Skink, Congaree National Park

Why didn't I add milkweed beetles mating to the list?

Bird (and Bear) Moms: Figuratively

I'm unsure of my parenting style.
I'm told that it wasn't that long ago that "parenting" wasn't a thing, certainly not a thing that was done in any particular style.  But I live in the twenty-teens in the United State and one can't just try one's best to raise kids to be compassionate, intelligent adults.  One need a style; be it attachment, free-range, helicopter, Chinese mom, French mom, or honey badger.

Among CHASA Facebook discussions, lots of parents talk about bringing out Mama Bear.  After all, if mom doesn't stand up to demand what a kid needs, who will?
Mama Bear is deemed necessary because pediatric stroke survivors can have a long list of special needs, physically, developmentally, and educationally.  And many of these needs can be ignored, missed, or denied.  CHASA discussions are filled with stories of doctors labeling parents as hypochondriacs rather than helping them seek help; teachers skipping the accommodations written into an IEP*; in-laws avoiding grandkids because they don't know how to deal with their sensory issues; or formerly good friends assuring mothers that "nothing is wrong" with their hemi-kids as they miss key developmental milestones. It probably doesn't need to be said that a special version of Mama Bear; Mama Bear Accounta
nt File Keeper Extraordinaire can be necessary for dealing with insurance claim paper work.

On another side of things, I am a teacher with lots of teacher friends and relatives.  Certain parents are not seen as necessarily protective bears, but rather as seagulls.  They swoop in, make a lot of noise, ruffle a lot of feathers, and leave a mess of waste in their wake.

I don't want to be a seagull parent.

I don't really like being a bear.

Eagles before color/mud race May 21, 2016

But if the Mister and I don't make some noise, sometimes nothing happens.  Our initial neurology appointment, at age 2, triggered a bunch of Early Intervention (EI) steps because of the cerebral palsy diagnosis, but we had known Aster had experienced a brain event since well before he was born. I learned about CHASA from a google search looking for toys that force the use of two hands, about botox and constraint therapy from CHASA, about physiatrists from a occupational therapists who stopped by once, and about the CP clinic in Denver from trying to find something else.  Aster has a great team of people looking out for him, but with nobody "in charge" few recommendations are every made (except, "oh, yeah, that would be definitely something to look into").  Being a barred owl (out of the box and flying in a month) isn't going to work for this family.

I need some other style.  I don't want to keep my kids as close as an Emperor Penguin, nor abandon them to crash on the rocks the first time they fly, like a gannet.

Watching the cameras on the live birds, the bald eagles most resonated with me. The cynical among you might point out how stereotypically easily persuaded American that is, or how much easier it is to get good views inside an eagle next compared to a condor cave or a cramped owl box. I choose, however, to notice how duties are split between both eagle parents.  How the eagle kids appear to get along.  How the parents give the kids space, but always seem to know what is going on.

I hope to be a proud eagle parent.**

*Individualized Education Program: the official document of special education in the United States under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

**Pun about the local Pre-K-1 elementary school being the Eagles, and this being the last night Dianthus being a student at that school, entirely unintended until about halfway through the post, when I remembered this photograph and made it intentional.