This one is for the birds!—And the dragonflies! I thought of them both with great appreciation when I leafed through the home accessories catalog and saw their images, now pasted in this collage:
And here’s why:
The summer birds are gone now. All we hear, mostly, are crow caws and blue jay squawks, and, soothing in the evening and early morning, the soft hoot-hoot of our resident owl.
One flock we miss most, even before the air grows chill, are the swallows that perch in spring and summer on overhead wires (like the birds in the collage), holding their flying and bug-catching seminars. While they hang around here, soaring and swooping, the mosquitoes grow scarce. Right after these feathered friends leave on their exodus south, you can notice the difference. (Swat! Scratch!)
The insect population surges, but not for long. Soon those other wondrous creatures appear in greater numbers, darting and air-dancing iridescent over the lawns and fields: the dazzling dragonflies. On sunny afternoons I sometimes get to sit and watch them, fascinated. They glint and glimmer in the sunlight, and sometimes flash past so fast my eyes can’t keep up with them.
A few flycatchers show up more often as well. One’s been hanging out with me lately when I grab warm days in my porch sitting place. I ask him if he’s the one who sang to me from the roof peak two summers ago. Then I watch him do his air acrobatics, which still make my jaw drop. I cannot figure how a bird with such ordinary, non-hummingbird build can pause midair the way he does.
What a delight for me are these birds and dragonflies! So when I saw bird line-up and dragonfly images on facing “junk” catalog pages, I set right into cutting, and soon after did the pasting. The rustic shutter came from the same catalog, as I think did the field flower images.
In my paste-up, at first the dragonflies disappeared too much. So I gave them some embellishment: outlining and dotted doodles around their borders, and glitter-glue dabs on their wings.
That’s how today’s collage happened: Like a thank-you to Him Who creates such wonders and a salute to those helpful and beloved winged friends.
*****
Previous posts in this series:
Day 1 Collage and 31-Days Introduction
Day 2 Collage: Nothing-But-Junk Fish
Day 3 Collage: What Grabs Your Heart?
I always wondered where the birds go in the winter. I know the swans fly south, but little birds??? Love your collages.
Thanks, Hazel, I am really enjoying making them!
You prompted me to look up the facts on barn swallows. Here’s a good info site:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barn_Swallow/lifehistory
It has a migration map on the right. They fly all the way down to Central and South America!