“Nature is never boring. If you pay attention, you will always see, hear, smell or feel something surprising, whether you are walking around in a tropical rainforest or in your own backyard.” – Arjan Dwarshuis, from his book, The (Big) Year That Flew By.
Aging My Way
As I’m reading Arjan’s book – which takes readers on a year-long journey around the world in which the author saw a record-breaking 6,852 birds in a single year — I’m watching the rain pour over the gutters outside my patio door. It’s monsoon season in Tucson and it’s been a wet and windy one.
I treasure Arjan’s words because the only place I’ve been bird and nature watching recently has been my own small patio yard. It’s a shady place with two oleander trees, a tall cottonwood, and a potted rubber tree plant that I’ve owned for over 30 years. Birds, enticed even more by seed and nectar feeders, love it.
The most recent and spectacular avian visitors have been a pair of hooded orioles, the male a bright gold and the female a bright yellow. They hang around, and feed from the nectar feeder.
Hey Arjan! I’m paying attention.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
Pat Bean's blog 
What a beautiful bird!