2015 then some

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Being that it's nine days into the New Year, it was time I hung a new wall calendar in my office. 

This year it's The Cornell Lab of Ornithology offering with a cover photo by Linda Petersen. And look at that blithe thing, could it be that yellow? Oh yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia), you're like a winged sunbeam with a song so sweet (mnemonic: sweet sweet sweet I’m so sweet.) Could there be anything more perfect on this sub-freezing day?

All the yellow warblers on the planet are not freezing their little saffron cheeks off. They're wintering in the Yucatán Peninsula south through Central America to Columbia and Venezuela. Oh, to be so blithe; flash such élan on a distant wooded mountain. But in three months they'll pass through our valley, most on their way to breeding grounds farther north.

Sweet sweet sweet I’m so sweet.  

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