New Year’s Day Snow, Weeping Birch and Starlings

January 1, 2025, finds my reverence for birds unabated, rooted in personal experience, though an appreciation for certain species has shifted over the years as intelligence, communication, and behavior have supplanted my early fascination with plumage and birdsong.

During the late 1950s and 1960s, for example, most of northern Ohio’s crows had migrated south by early November. The common (European) starlings, however, remained another few weeks in flocks of hundreds; their rhythmic murmurations animating the sky. There was something about both these black birds that was compelling — intelligence, personality perhaps, or simply a resoluteness not found in most songbirds.

The weeping birch, pictured here, was a small planting on Squire Valleevue Farm 50 years ago when I would run my dogs on the property. It now stands 60–70 feet, and the small strings of dried fruit sustain the local population of starlings through winter.

This day these dark, lightly flecked, iridescent marvels congregated in abundance, most populating the upper reaches of the birch as a small contingent on the ground braced against the wind, picking seeds beneath the snow.

Year: 2025
Location: Squire Valleevue Farm
Limited Edition of 20
Dimensions: 11" × 16.5"