Not an ode or a rant but here’s a short film I wrote with the very talented director Jason Wishnow.
A love story between a grown-up girl and a mysterious friend from her childhood (plus a case against moving in with your parents). Starring Heather Burns, Ajay Naidu, Beth Grant, Michael Chieffo, and Miles Fisher.
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t read Game of Thrones or seen the first season, this post contains major spoilers. Also, I refer to the series throughout as Game of Thrones rather than A Song of Ice and Fire ‘cause it’s just easier.
This post is an ode to Game of Thrones, but more specifically, it is an ode to a very specific plot point and its significance — the killing of Ned Stark.
One of the great joys of the fantasy/sci-fi genre is the “holy shit” moment. And for my money, the killing of Ned Stark is my favorite “holy shit” moment in any fictional work. I’ve tried to determine why it had such an impact. Obviously, the killing of a character that you believe to be the protagonist of the story is shocking, and that clearly has a lot to do with it. It also functions as a very powerful anyone can die moment, a maneuver which the best of this genre typically must wield well.
But I think the dramatic impact of this particular death runs deeper and has a larger significance both to the series and to the genre itself. I think the killing of Ned Stark functions as a subversion, actually a shattering, of the dominant cultural perspective in fantasy and science fiction and really most genres — i.e. the white, male, heterosexual perspective.
First, it is important to define the genre that Game of Thrones seemingly falls into. It initially appears to fall into a specific and recurring type of fantasy and science-fiction — an ensemble with a dominant protagonist — think Star Wars, Firefly, The Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings (which perhaps has duel protagonists in Frodo and Aragorn), both Buffy and Angel, Y: The Last Man, The Walking Dead, etc. This prototype is also evident in other genre shows like Deadwood where survival and morality play key components.
These stories typically feature white male protagonists as the dominant perspective despite a group of supporting players who are more diverse and often more interesting. These supporting players are important to the story and even function as main characters, but at the end of the day, the weight of the world rests on the protagonist’s shoulders, although they may get help from their friends. It’s up to Luke to destroy the Death Star, Rand to fight the Dark One, Angel to stave off the latest apocalypse. The exception of course is Buffy, which was, from the beginning, a conscious attempt to subvert the genre.
So when we begin Game of Thrones, while it is immediately clear that this is an attempt at a grittier, darker genre piece — incest! horse beheadings! child brides! — it nevertheless feels familiar at its core. Ned Stark is the obvious protagonist with an ensemble of well-drawn and more diverse side characters populating the world. Ned has the most chapters in the book. On the television series he is played by the most famous actor. He also emerges as the person in the best position to take on the characters we view as antagonists. If someone’s going to set this kingdom straight, it’s going to be Ned.
And Ned of course has many of the hallmarks of a typical hero — he’s a man of honor, but also physically capable, a good father and a good husband. He has power, but he wields it justly. He’s the epitome of what a heroic man is supposed to be. He fights the good fight, even when it’s hard, maybe even when he shouldn’t. But this is what a hero does.
And usually, the anyone can die plot device feeds into this. Main characters may be killed, but the dominant protagonist does not die, and in fact the deaths of main characters, often those close to him, are important because it establishes what the hero must endure in order to keep fighting. The idea tends to be look, these guys are fighting a war, and in wars people die, but that’s what makes our hero so noble — he keeps fighting even when it’s hard and even when it hurts.
So when Ned is killed, it is of course shocking because he was our protagonist, but its significance extends beyond a mere shocking plot point. It’s a wrecking ball crashing into our ideas of what this genre is and whose stories get to be told and fully realized.
Because once Ned is killed, the world is blown wide open. There is no dominant perspective in the book anymore. Everyone’s perspective now has an equal right and claim to the story, whether it’s a dwarf, a child, or a woman. These are no longer the diverse supporting players to a dominant center. Every character is the hero of his or her own story, and we may like or dislike their perspectives, but every character is on equal footing. Ned’s death doesn’t just signify that no one is safe and anyone can die. It also signifies that anyone has the potential to step up and fill his void, to emerge as the one who makes history, and as the series expands in scope and perspectives, this becomes even more clear.
This shift is so effective because Game of Thrones, the books in particular, employs the use of character perspective as the vehicle through which the story is told. The books are divided into chapters named after the characters, in which that character’s point of view narrates the story. Other books employ this tactic to varying degrees. The Wheel of Time series certainly has a wide array of character perspectives through which the story is told. But again, we always know that Rand is going to be the one who ultimately has to battle The Dark One for the fate of the world.
In contrast, in Game of Thrones and the series at large, when a new character perspective is introduced, our immediate reaction may be that we want to get back to our old favorites, but we quickly adapt to these new characters and become interested in them because we realize that that character, whether or not he or she fits the traditional trappings of a genre hero, could be the one who ends up shaping history or turning the story on its head.
This is not to say that the internal world of Game of Thrones has lost its white male bias, and in fact this is one of the prevalent themes of the book — characters struggling against the cultural confines of the world. It is also not to say that the story has done away with the white heterosexual male perspective. There are still many great characters who fit this mold. However, none of them represent the dominant perspective.
And I think this is one of the great strengths of the series and what makes it so unique. George R.R. Martin has consciously populated his books with every manner of person — the deformed, the ugly, the crippled, the gay, the dishonorable, the unfit, the underage — many of whom rarely get to have their perspectives explored in fictional works. When we do get to see such characters, they are always either relegated to supporting players, or, if they do get main billing and the dominant perspective, it is in a drama where the lead actor will win an Oscar for playing such a deformed person. But they don’t get to be heroes in a story such as this. And in Game of Thrones they aren’t heroes exactly. They’re just treated as equally relevant.
Game of Thrones is of course not the first work to embrace alternate perspectives in this genre. There are several mainstream examples of genre works that offer a dominant female perspectives (non-white and gay perspectives as the dominant one seem to be rarer). Again, Buffy is an obvious one. But what Buffy is doing is different. First, it was clear from the beginning that Buffy was offering a new perspective. But second, Buffy maintains a dominant perspective — it replaces the usual male one with that of a teenage girl — but Buffy is still the hero of the story, and the Scoobie gang, while main characters, are the support.
What’s different about Game of Thrones is that it is set up to make you believe that it is a heroic fantasy story, albeit a grittier one. We know it is possible that Ned Stark may die, but we do not expect him to die before another dominant heroic perspective is set up — perhaps Jon Snow or Robb or maybe even Arya or Dany. So when Game of Thrones smashes through our expectations and kills Ned, it’s not just that the dominant male perspective is destroyed to be replaced by something else, it’s that every perspective is now viable. It becomes a truly egalitarian fantasy book. Which, considering that Game of Thrones is one of the most well-regarded and mainstream works in the fantasy genre, a genre dubbed “boy fiction” by a New York Times reviewer, is pretty awesome.
What. The. Fuck.
By Annabelle, 2011, via www.curiositycounts.com
I went to MoMA and…
Saw a coat closet trash and two water fountains I’m very disappointed I did not see a dinosour you call your self a museum!
By Douglas Adams, 1999, via www.douglasadams.com (originally titled, “How to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet”)
A couple of years or so ago I was a guest on Start The Week, and I was authoritatively informed by a very distinguished journalist that the whole Internet thing was just a silly fad like ham radio in the fifties, and that if I thought any different I was really a bit naïve. It is a very British trait – natural, perhaps, for a country which has lost an empire and found Mr Blobby – to be so suspicious of change.
But the change is real. I don’t think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn’t becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it’s very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don’t bother to mention when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans ‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their day.
Then there’s the peculiar way in which certain BBC presenters and journalists (yes, Humphrys Snr., I’m looking at you) pronounce internet addresses. It goes ‘www DOT … bbc DOT… co DOT… uk SLASH… today SLASH…’ etc., and carries the implication that they have no idea what any of this new-fangled stuff is about, but that you lot out there will probably know what it means.
I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:
1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.
This subjective view plays odd tricks on us, of course. For instance, ‘interactivity’ is one of those neologisms that Mr Humphrys likes to dangle between a pair of verbal tweezers, but the reason we suddenly need such a word is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport – the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head.
I expect that history will show ‘normal’ mainstream twentieth century media to be the aberration in all this. ‘Please, miss, you mean they could only just sit there and watch? They couldn’t do anything? Didn’t everybody feel terribly isolated or alienated or ignored?’
‘Yes, child, that’s why they all went mad. Before the Restoration.’
‘What was the Restoration again, please, miss?’
‘The end of the twentieth century, child. When we started to get interactivity back.’
Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.
Of course, there’s a great deal wrong with the Internet. For one thing, only a minute proportion of the world’s population is so far connected. I recently heard some pundit on the radio arguing that the internet would always be just another unbridgeable gulf between the rich and the poor for the following reasons – that computers would always be expensive in themselves, that you had to buy lots of extras like modems, and you had to keep upgrading your software. The list sounds impressive but doesn’t stand up to a moment’s scrutiny. The cost of powerful computers, which used to be around the level of jet aircraft, is now down amongst the colour television sets and still dropping like a stone. Modems these days are mostly built-in, and standalone models have become such cheap commodities that companies, like Hayes, whose sole business was manufacturing them are beginning to go bust.. Internet software from Microsoft or Netscape is famously free. Phone charges in the UK are still high but dropping. In the US local calls are free. In other words the cost of connection is rapidly approaching zero, and for a very simple reason: the value of the web increases with every single additional person who joins it. It’s in everybody’s interest for costs to keep dropping closer and closer to nothing until every last person on the planet is connected.
Another problem with the net is that it’s still ‘technology’, and ‘technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined it, is ‘stuff that doesn’t work yet.’ We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‘crash’ when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs (and a couple of decades or so after that, as sheets of paper or grains of sand) and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I’m sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for ‘productivity.’
But the biggest problem is that we are still the first generation of users, and for all that we may have invented the net, we still don’t really get it. In ‘The Language Instinct’, Stephen Pinker explains the generational difference between pidgin and creole languages. A pidgin language is what you get when you put together a bunch of people – typically slaves – who have already grown up with their own language but don’t know each others’. They manage to cobble together a rough and ready lingo made up of bits of each. It lets them get on with things, but has almost no grammatical structure at all.
However, the first generation of children born to the community takes these fractured lumps of language and transforms them into something new, with a rich and organic grammar and vocabulary, which is what we call a Creole. Grammar is just a natural function of children’s brains, and they apply it to whatever they find.
The same thing is happening in communication technology. Most of us are stumbling along in a kind of pidgin version of it, squinting myopically at things the size of fridges on our desks, not quite understanding where email goes, and cursing at the beeps of mobile phones. Our children, however, are doing something completely different. Risto Linturi, research fellow of the Helsinki Telephone Corporation, quoted in Wired magazine, describes the extraordinary behaviour kids in the streets of Helsinki, all carrying cellphones with messaging capabilities. They are not exchanging important business information, they’re just chattering, staying in touch. “We are herd animals,” he says. “These kids are connected to their herd – they always know where it’s moving.” Pervasive wireless communication, he believes will “bring us back to behaviour patterns that were natural to us and destroy behaviour patterns that were brought about by the limitations of technology.”
We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing.
Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them.
By Steve R., 2005, via Amazon.com (originally titled “quasi-religious, psuedo-inspirational, seriously inane drivel”)
Contrived. Pretentious. Juvenile. That’s just the introduction, in which the author discusses his amazement at the popularity this book has gained. It is equally astonishing for any reader who is able to endure more than five pages of: “The Soul of the World spoke to the Heart of the Boy as he prayed to the God of the Dessert who commanded the Spirit of the Wind…” I found myself praying to the God of Literature that the boy’s beloved sheep would stampeded and trample him to death, sparing me from the Demons of Boredom. If you liked the Celestine Prophecy you’ll love The Alchemist. You can read it while you’re waiting for the mothership to return. Otherwise, take a pass and read something more intellectually engaging, like the tax code.
By bbandslim, to Internet Scammer, 2011
A Scammer Hacked my high school Friend’s facebook account and asked me for money. I asked for love in return. And got it. Transcript below. If she really is stranded in London, I feel real bad about this.
m (scammer): Hello, how are you doing???
lj: hey how are you
m: not good at the moment
lj: oh no whatsup
m: my family and i went to london uk for vacation but unfortunately we got mugged at gun and nifepoint last night
lj: omg! that’s awful is everyone ok?
m: all our cash and credit card was stolen including cell phone:
lj: jeeze! that’s horrible!
m: it was a brutal and scary experience. i was hurt on my right hand but thank god we still got our life and passport saved here with us.
lj: thank god for that! how much longer are you there?
m: our return flight leaves in a few hours from now but w are having some problems setting our hotel bills here… please i need your help now
lj: great but the one condition is we take things back as they were. you leave your husband. you know thatn’s not who you really are. we belong together. and i’ll save you now as i always do but i need a token of your love.
m: you can have it wired to me via western union all you need is my name and location
lj: i think you’re just using me. you don’t love me anymore. remember how you used to send me poetry?
m: please i have limited time here. i am freaked out and mentally unbalanced and can’t think straight. i was hit with a club at the back of the neck. please help me i have limited time here.
lj: not until you tell me how you really feel. in poetry. like you used to.
m: i love you more than you know. just wish you didn’t have to go. just want one more day with you. and i know that’s what you would have wanted to. i miss you more and more each day. there is so much more we have to say. i know i will see you again but my life is just starting to begin. you may not be here with me… but thoughts of you are always in my heart… i miss you!
lj: do you remember how smooth my skin is how shiny my hair and when we kissed the first time you said my lips were like morning dew?
m: you’re my perfect partner, sweet lover, trusted friend. we’re safe within our love. a love that will never end.
m: should i give you the info you need to have the money wired me?
lj: When you’re back in the stated let’s go to the red roof inn
I’ll do things to you to make you remember
m: ok. should i give you the info you need to have the money wired me ???
lj: So you still have your cheerleader outfit?
m: yes..should i give you the info you need to have the money wired me ???
lj: You do? I still have my marching bans outfit the one you said made my ass look like two perfect cantaloupes
And i still have my piccolo. You know how you likes that
I’ll make you get to high c baby
m: 46 Norfolk Square London W2 1RT, United Kingdom
got he info???
how long will it take you to have the money wired to me???
lj: Fine! It’s over! I never want to talk to you again! You were just using me!!!
m: OMG..are you helping me or what??
lj: Tell me I have a big bad piccolo
m: you do
how long will it take you to have the money wired to me???
By Gilbert Sorrentino, 1962 (excerpt from “The Meeting”)
He said he could give up everything
except he could not give up anything
when the test was made of him. He
is a quiet man, I used to mistake
that for strength
when I was younger..
I mistook it for solidity
and thought all stronger
men were silent. I have always
talked too much, and hated
it in myself. But what is speech
but the release of strength
that threatens to destroy us?
What is speech but
the incantation that can make
men out of mud and mountains
out of slime and nothingness?
“Still waters run deep,” is a lie,
bring me the talkers, the windbags,
confessors and liars, the
men who talk all night and all day
who do nothing but talk, who
won’t stop even when they have no more
to say, silence
is no more than the lid
of the garbagecan.
By Unknown Angry Person, 2008 (originally posted at craigslist - http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/tor/649999147.html)
I don’t care what colour you are. I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care what you do for a living. I don’t care what class you are, how you dress, what you smoke or drink or who you know or whom you’ve fucked.
I hate you all. I hate every last living, breathing, snot and feces producing, promiscuously copulating, celebrity obsessed, opinionated one of you. From right here in Toronto right around the planet and back, coast to coast, nationwide and internationally. Every. Single. Last. One. Of. You.
Fuck love. Fuck your insipid grasping at some abstract concept of chemical imbalances and reasonless actions, fumbling around in the crowd trying to find some cinematic supposition for real human interaction. Fuck lust, too. Fuck you all, from the lowlife dirtbags that think dropping trou and waving the little soldier in a sloppy arc is a pick-up line to the sniveling of the desperate ‘nice guys’ who never get the girl due to a total lack of testosterone grown stones. Fuck you all, from the crazy, under dressed sluts that judge a persons character by the price of their shirt, right down to the fat, flabby chicks that think personality is enough.
Fuck you drivers, for thinking that a yellow light is a sign that says ‘step on the gas’. Fuck you wheelmen and women that think it’s okay to sit in a left hand turn in the middle of morning traffic, even though there is a protected left in the intersections before and after where you need to make your turn. Fuck you too cyclists - you’re not exempt from the traffic laws just because your peddling, you miserable spandex covered neon reflective fucks. Fuck you too, pedestrians. Use the fucking crosswalk if you don’t want to get hit, and use it before the little countdown clock says ‘3’. You don’t have enough goddamn time to lope across four lanes of traffic.
Fuck you chick on your cellphone. Fuck you attitude packed minimum-wager that makes my coffee. Fuck you cops that spend all their time handing out speeding tickets. Fuck you douche bag doing ten over the limit in the passing lane on the highway. Fuck you lady using exact change at the counter at the grocery store. Fuck you kids having a conversation in the doorway. And fuck you also for not getting the fuck out of your designated handicapped seat when a pregnant or elderly person gets on the fucking bus.
Fuck taxes. Fuck welfare. Fuck the whole selfish, over politicized and party driven government system. I’m sick and fucking tired of policies and new laws with seven hundred bylaws that nobody but you and your cabinet reads. Fuck you councilors and your stupid ‘district improvement’ plans. Fuck you unions, for asking for so much and giving nothing more that what you already give. Fuck the whole process that allows people who are supposed to be working for us work for interests that only benefit the next campaign. Fuck your short-sightedness, your rush to the bandwagons, and your incessant arguing over fuck all. Fuck the parties, fuck the conventions, and fuck your campaigns. Do some real fucking work for a change.
Fuck you bottles of water. You’re water. You’re not worth two fucking dollars.
Fuck you trendsetters, fuck you fashionistas. Fuck your little dogs and and your idiotic outfits. Fuck your high heels in the snow. Fuck your five dollar coffees and your fifteen dollar veggie burgers. Fuck your health kick, your diet or your fucking new interest in kickboxing or sushi.
Fuck your culture. Fuck your race. Fuck your sense of entitlement. Fuck your sense of uniqueness. Fuck you all for the belief that you have something unique and interesting to contribute. Fuck you for filling the internet with your useless garbage. Fuck your blogs, your wikis, your forums. Fuck your name calling. And most of all, fuck whatever you believe. It’s all wrong. Fuck it.
Fuck your complaints. Fuck your addictions. Fuck your dependencies. Fuck your pain. Fuck your tears. Fuck selling whatever it is you sell. Fuck your manipulation of others. Fuck movies. Fuck fucking. Fuck everything you own. Fuck your allergies. Fuck your stupid commons sense. Fuck your spelling and fuck your lack of education, or your ignorance, whatever is applicable.
I don’t give a fuck. Shut the fuck up and just get on with it.
By Diana Churchill, 2011 (originally posted at Savannah Morning News - http://savannahnow.com/column/2011-04-05/birder-ode-april)
If, heaven forbid, I had to limit my bird watching to a single month each year, it could only be April. For starters, you can’t beat April for bird song. This is the time when male birds throw caution to the wind, loudly announcing their presence in an all-out effort to get a date, a mate, and some real estate.
While a jazz trio or a string quartet might suffice for a winter bird performance, only a full orchestra will do in April. The concert begins with the resident wrens, cardinals, chickadees, mockingbirds, and brown thrashers warbling their melodies, while woodpeckers pound out the percussion line.
Each day, as the neo-tropical migrants blow into town, some new “instrument” is added — the reedy “spee, spee” of the blue-gray gnatcatcher; the explosive “wheep” of the great-crested flycatcher; the bubbling trills and clicks of a dozen purple martins. During April, I can rest my eyes and follow my ears, to the raspy “three-A” of a yellow-throated vireo, or the thin, wandering warble of a painted bunting.
Ah, the painted bunting! Now that is a bird worth watching. In fact, a plethora of “eye candy” birds make their annual Low Country appearances each April. Who could refrain from an “ooh” or an “ahh” at the appearance of a scarlet tanager, an indigo bunting, a Baltimore oriole, or a rose-breasted grosbeak?
Along with all that singing comes nest building and egg laying. Carolina wrens seem to have a competition each year to see which pair can come up with the most unusual nest site. Hanging plants are always popular, as are kayak ledges, bicycle helmets, and anything sitting unused in a shed.
Another April attraction is the colonial nesting extravaganza of the long-legged wading birds. Herons, egrets, ibis and wood storks gather in swampy wetlands to model the latest in fancy dress for spring. Showy, white plumes — dubbed “aigrettes” in French — are the attire of choice for snowy and great egrets. Tri-colored herons don a tan mantle and sporty white head plume, while white ibis announce their ardor with intensely pink down-curved bills and matching legs. For wood storks, their black feathers take on a metallic green cast while white sides turn a blushing peach. They finish off the outfit with feet turned startlingly pink.
While most of the ducks that spend the winter here are headed north to breed, the year-round resident wood ducks, mallards, and mottled ducks play their own version of the mating game. Small groups of wood ducks engage in a little competitive flaunt and chase behavior.
Male wood ducks are decidedly handsome, but they won’t win the “best husband” award. He leaves his hard-working mate to incubate her 6-15 eggs for 25 to 35 days. One day after the young ducklings hatch, they leave the nest cavity and follow mama to the water. April is a great time to see baby ducklings, which the female alone tends for five to six weeks.
April is also a great month for birds at the beach. Red knots, sanderlings, black-bellied plovers, ruddy turnstones, dunlin, and dowitchers are dressing up in their breeding best and layering on the fat, in preparation for the long flight to the Arctic. Laughing gulls don their snappy black helmets, while royal terns and black skimmers noisily court with fish.
And if all the above activity weren’t enough to make me want to spend the entire month of April doing nothing but watching birds, there are still are few lingering winter visitors to be found. White-throated sparrows can be heard singing their sweet “oh, Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody” while ruby-crowned kinglets and yellow-rumped warblers do a little practice courting before they too head north. Adding to the excitement, the male American goldfinches are finally showing their true colors.
All I can say is “Hooray for April!”
Good birding.
