A Pretty Good Concert

It had been a long time since we'd been to an outdoor concert and within three songs we were picking up our chairs and moving.  Apparently, somewhere along the line, people stopped going to concerts to hear music.  All around us people who were talking when we got there and kept talking without pause or notice of the music.  As we were leaving, we found a spot on the outer perimeter, some 10 yards from anyone, where the music sounded good and the artists did not have to compete with babble.  It was a pretty good concert.

No words are said on my trip in the East River, unless you count my stanza of "High Chin Bob" which was muttered out in an appropriate monotone.  The important stuff is being said to me, not by me.


In the bottom of the salt marsh, willets shouted out their warning calls backed up by osprey whistles.  The willets were particularly loud when I went through the Sneak, which does bring one closest to their nesting sites.  They are fast and nimble fliers and part of their sentinel duty is to draw your attention by speeding past at close distance and flashing their black and white wings (which only show when flying). 

Higher up, where the water goes brackish and finally fresh, the wrens and red wing blackbirds took over.  I saw no more than a few as the cattails and spartina are full up, thick, and green, but the calls of dozens trilled and buzzaped out clearly.  In response, I sang all that I remembered of "A Place in the Choir".

All God's creatures got a place in the choir
Some sing low and some sing higher
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire
Some just clap their hands or paws or anything they got, now

It was a pretty good concert.