Cottonwood Tree | Colorado Nature Narratives

Great Expectations

Posted February 25th, 2011 by Melissa and filed in Birds, Trees, WIldlife Habitat

Tags: aspen tree bark, aspen trees, Birds, Chickadee, chlorophyll, Colorado Springs, cottonwood tree, dark falcon, merlin, natural landscapes, nature, Seasons, Spring, Stanley Crawford

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Recently I read The River in Winter, a collection of essays by Stanley Crawford. The author describes the rhythms of life and seasonal changes on his northern New Mexico farm and in the natural land bordering his cultivated fields. He observes how people absorb knowledge of their natural world without even trying. Even if they don’t know the names of trees, birds or flowers, they will know which trees leaf out first, where a hawk likes to perch, where the first flower of spring will bloom.

Light green bark of aspen trees

I have found this to be true. Even as a little girl growing up in north Louisiana, I knew when to look for ripe blackberries, that one bird sang only at night, and I recognized the songs of many birds even though the birds remained nameless to me for a long time. Over the years, though, I began to pay more attention to the natural world and came to expect to be surprised by nature on almost every venture outside. Just yesterday in my Colorado Springs neighborhood, I saw a Merlin, a small falcon with dark plumage, for the first time in my life. It was perched in one of the tall cottonwood trees right across the street. And in our backyard, I noticed the faint green color of chlorophyll that shades the bark of aspen trees, and heard the two-note whistle of the Black-capped Chickadee, reminding me that the first day of spring is only 23 days away.