Ice and Song

We’re expecting one inch of snow overnight and they already closed the schools for tomorrow.

I wonder if the federal government will also close.

The D.C. area really has become the epitome of wimpiness.

“But it’s the ICE!”

Well, we’ve always had ice. The difference is that it actually had to be on the ground and too thick for sand to offer traction on it before anything closed. I remember schlepping to a job that was a 10-minute walk from Union Station, basically skating across Stanton Park in my boots, and stopping to marvel at the unfortunate beauty of budding cherry trees encased in ice half an inch thick.

And yet, nature looks toward spring, even now, in mid-January. This morning Pierre the Northern Cardinal flew up into the tree after Balcony Breakfast and sang his first courting song of the year. It moved me to tears for being alive to hear it.

He kept stopping and starting as though learning and practicing, thus confirming for me that he is a young one and maybe even a surviving son of the pair who nested in the holly bushes last spring. I don’t know where they went or what might have happened to them, though I fear that their second clutch failed because of the sprinklers and they might have abandoned the site. They also may have divorced (it happens about 20% of the time) or perhaps perished of natural causes, including predation, as the average Northern Cardinal lifespan is a heartbreakingly short three years.

I love that Pierre has grown–perhaps in part because of his visits to the balcony?–and I’ll cherish hearing him for the next few months as he establishes his territory and seeks a mate, even when he routinely wakes me up before 5:00 a.m. next month. I hope a lovely lady Northern Cardinal finds his song as charming as I do.