Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘#woodducks’

Heidi is hosting Poetry Friday this week and she shares a video conversation she recorded of Jone MacCulloch, Heidi Mordhorst, and me talking about our teaching artist experience. Please click this link to check it out.

A big thank you to Heidi Mordhorst for hosting today and for taking the time and energy to create a video about our work with students as teaching artists. I learned so much from Jone and Heidi that I hope to add to my repertoire of workshops.

National Poetry Month is moving along in starts and stops for me. One day the words come, the next I look at a page full of senseless scribbles. I am trying to respond daily to the Ethical ELA VerseLove prompts. Yesterday, Stacey Joy of California prompted us to write an etheree. I wrote once again about wood ducks. (I have a whole book of poems about the Wood Duck house) Our first clutch hatched and fledged, so we have another hen coming in. I am endlessly fascinated by them.

Photo by Jeff Wiles on Pexels.com

Anticipating

When
eastern
sunlight gleams
a beam across
greening cypress trees,
another wood duck hen
flies in, wiggles her belly
beginning a new clutch to watch
in hope for new life to lay waiting.
Cycle of birth always a miracle.

Margaret Simon, draft

The Kidlit Progressive Poem took a surprising turn this week with a Poetry Slam! Check out today’s line with Robyn Hood Black.

Tabatha Yeatts has graciously offered to end the poem on April 28th. She had the beginning line and is the creator of the map.

Read Full Post »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

For years now, we have watched nesting in the wood duck house my husband built for the bayou bank. This time of year beginning in late February a female hen comes to the box to lay a clutch of eggs.

We invested in a Ring doorbell camera, not to watch for criminal activity, but to see the comings and goings of a resident wood duck hen.

View from the camera when another hen came in to gossip.

These days my phone alerts me constantly. “There is motion at the wood duck house.”

The eggs are due at the end of the month. She usually sits for 28-31 days. We had a cool snap, so I’m worried that all the eggs won’t hatch. But that is the nature of nature, right?

Once the eggs hatch, all on the same day, the little ones will jump from the house 24 hours later. It is a wonder to watch. A few years ago we caught it on video.

Last year I released a small chapbook of poems about the wood duck nesting season, Wood Duck Diary. The funds from the sales benefit the Teche Project. This is a book of tanka poems in English and in French.

March 11

Feathering the Clutch

Hen stitches feathers
one by one. Woven blanket

clutch-cover of down.
Her beak a knitting needle.
Eggs safe and snug below.

Read Full Post »

Yesterday was Jump Day for our first clutch of wood ducks this year. We had a good mother and only one. Sometimes two will take a box and you can end up with 2 dozen eggs, but not this year. One mother, one clutch, one dozen. She sat for 32 days. I was so relieved they didn’t hatch during this past week’s cold front. They waited for warmth to return. Only 8 of the 12 eggs hatched. This ratio is typical, we’ve learned.

I wanted to watch the jump, but it was a school day. I kept checking the Ring camera and the mother was calmly cuddling her chicks. At 10:15 I went outside to plan a butterfly garden with my student. Then I packed up and left that school for my next school. Yep, that was when they jumped.

My mother-in-law came to our house for the big event with a book and binoculars. She texted me that 8 ducklings had jumped. Four eggs were left in the box. Enjoy the video from inside the nest box. There always seems to be one that has trouble figuring it all out. We cheer for this little guy.

New Chicks

Gentle peeps echo.

Jumping onto mother hen,

New chicks jitterbug.

Like petals on a pinwheel

fluffy down spins together. 

Wood Duck Diary Tanka, Margaret Simon, all rights reserved.

Read Full Post »