Birds in Winter

Winter white punctuated by toned-down tree trunks, scruff stubble showing through thin snow, birds scrabbling for birdseed, and the occasional brilliant cardinal. Rare red on a bland palette: noticeable, heart-stopping color. I try not to notice, like conspicuously ignoring a raving beauty who's wandered into my line of vision. Not fair to the rest of us, this eye-grabbing, heart-stopping richness. Yesterday two big black crows (or ravens?) purposefully, and unusually, doing something near mouth of driveway. They are pursuing a hapless vole, and no doubt succeed in eating it, two on one. Nature. Tiny snowflakes drift down, an afterthought, everything frozen. Yesterday, thinking about the earth below the snow, which is very thin but very frozen, compassion for this difficult season, and joy to think of land at rest, briefly, and how it will wake up in the spring. Followed the tracks of a four-footed creature with roundish paws that had criss-crossed the yard. Looking for something. Hope it hasn't nested in the bales of straw I didn't use as mulch. Last year friends lost entire crops to hedgehogs and porcupines that nested up close. To live up here, you must enjoy winters, and I do. (Pax well-working furnace.) Reading: short stories by the writer who wrote "Bringing up the Bodies." A mixed bag. Viewing: Last week, all of "Mozart in the Jungle," new Amazon series; terrific. This week, "Parade's End" mini-series written by Tom Stoppard based on Ford Maddox Ford novels; terrific. "Parade's End" has a destructive character, the good aristocrat's glamorous wife, played by Rebecca Hall, who can't do anything without causing mayhem. Helps me wrap my mind around this phenomenon--the destructive narcissist--so hard to comprehend in a close family member. We're supposed to love them. The more we love, the more they hurt us. Lovely little gray bird on a twig, its buff under-fluff puffed out beyond the breast.