Fleeting Spring treasures, the cherry blossoms.
A streak of Spring is in Seattle. Four full-blown glorious days in a row, and they’re having an effect.
Yesterday morning our cherry tree was only in bud. At 6 p.m. it was in blossom. The tree is a treasure–a span of 45 feet and still growing. When it is in full-bloom and a complete mass of feathery petals, the span of the branches ought to be called a “wingspan”.
Our first sighting of the blooms happened to coincide with our first sighting of this season of a bee–enormous and flitting among the pink petals.
The herons in the ravine are still building their nests, flying up into the maples that are on the east side of the ravine to harvest the branches and then gliding across to keep weaving their nests on the west side.
The reports are coming in that already the eagles are doing their own harvesting, of the first eggs in the nests, and the crows are reaping the leftovers. All this time I’d thought that when the crows swarmed in after the eagles, they were actually trying to annoy the eagles and trying to ward them off–helping the herons. Now I learn that the crows are just staying true to the opportunist reputation of theirs’ and taking advantage of the eagle’s disruption of the herons’ nests. Like they say, “Make no assumptions” eh?
Photo by autan and used under Creative Commons licensing.
