The BullfinchI saw upon a winter's day
A bullfinch on a hedgerow spray;
He piped one note.
And since the countryside was mute,
As pure as rain I heard the flute
Of that small throat.
He picked a rotting willow-seed;
He whistled, in his joy to feed,
A whole sweet stave.
His sloe-black head, how shining sleek,
How strong his blunted sooty beak,
His eyes, how brave.
Then boldly down he came to drink
Out of a roadside puddle's brink,
Sp coral-breasted, sturdy, merry,
That I forgave him plum and cherry
Nipped in the bud.
00000000000000by Betty Hughes
I can't find any information about Betty Hughes — anybody knows how she was (is)?
The beautiful bullfinches are coming out of the woods to get fed but it is hard to get close enough to get a decent photo of them.
I spent a good part of this gorgeous day outside, while waiting for a guy to come and pick up my rotary cultivator and snow blower I looked for a Christmas tree — and found one. So the day before Christmas Eve I'll go out to get it.Both the snow blower and the cultivator are too heavy for me to handle instead I will get a smaller snow blower so I can clear a path from the door to the garage. We have a "snowman" who plows our driveway so I don't have to think of that.
It looks as a moose has got into the raspberry hedges. I found two of the 2 m high poles on the ground and the wires are tangled. I hope the poor animal didn't get hurt. I need to repair it and afterwards I better hang something on the wires — which won't show when it is dark but I think the moose usually move in the wee hours when they hopefully will notice things hanging from the wires.
It was lovely to spend time outside even if it meant that nothing got done inside. And the copper cauldron is full with wood now.
There is a Betty Hughes who seems to be very young and writes some poetry which you could find online, but it isn't nearly as good as this and the name is not unusual. So probably this was no help.
SvaraRaderaWe don't have such lovely bullfinches here in Ohio, though we do have wonderful birds and I had a 4 point stag in my backyard yesterday. Doesn't bode well for my garden next year. But I'm not so upset. We have more than a foot of accumulated snow on the ground here already. I can't remember this before Thanksgiving before in all my 63 years.
Thanks for trying to find out something about Betty Hughes. I too found several that didn't fit.
SvaraRaderaOnce when I visited the States I bought a book about the birds in North America and I've found that we in Europe hardly have any birds in common with you. The bullfinch is one of the few birds we have with bright colors. You don't see them very often in the summer but in the winter they come near the houses to be fed. The red looks so pretty in a snow landscape, which probably is one of the reasons that they are common on Christmas cards.
We have plenty of deer, which isn’t good for the garden, but they are so beautiful that I don't mind.
Margaretha