Actually, it’s called a murmuration of starlings. Possibly, as Dylan Winter, the narrator of this amazing clip notes, because of the murmuring of wings. Whatever the source of the name, the actual sight — even reduced to the size of a computer screen — is breathtaking. Starlings — those blackish birds most of us shoo…

I love my neighbourhood. Today I saw a hawk twice, with its mate one of those times. Saturday I saw a vixen fox. Her mate loped across our front yard, in broad daylight, around Christmas on a bitter cold snowy day. I took this photo today, in the front yard, from the car as we…

The goldfinches have (finally!) arrived. They’re going through about a feeder of thistle seed every couple of days. My sister, looking out the breakfast room window onto the 1-2-3-4-5-6+ feeding and water stations, wondered aloud what this costs us monthly. It’s not negligible. 🙂 But it’s soooo worth it. Afternoons like this, when there’s still…

I wish I could say I took this picture. But I will say that the hawk sitting on my deck rail looked at me just like this before it flew off. I heard it call while writing at my desk yesterday, in the other room — an eerily high sound, nothing like its looks. The…

Britton Gildersleeve
about

Britton Gildersleeve

Britton Gildersleeve is a 'third culture kid.' Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks ‘without,’ as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She’s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. She is (still) working on her beginner's heart ~

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