Downtown, there are bird cages encasing flowers as a decorative art form in the window of the insurance office.

They fascinate me. I find it creative in an everyday sort of way.

Morning to think about stuffed birds, about old bird cages.

A pair of ducks whistled o...

A morning where I had to dig the felt-lined leather boots out of the stuff piled in the mud room (back steps).

The bridge to spring is filled with turnoffs.

And I mean turnoffs.

A week ago, we had 70s, then yesterday several inches of snow.

It just made for an odd Monda...

Take it easy big fellas, no, I did not find any morels along Route 394 in Chicago's south suburbs. Though I have it on good authority that they are there.

I'll get back to morels.

The racket of robins erupted all around as Lady and I set off before dawn. Beneath their...

I expected both old clay pits to be open by this morning, but the south pit was still more than half frozen.

Why? How? I whine, therefore I am.

Yes, the photo looks drab. The end of winter is drab.

Semi-thawed.

I stretched out an extended ramble because I thought it w...

The first duck since the ice came whistled off near dawn. I think it was a wood duck by the sound of it--I could not see it in the half light--when it flew off the the east side of the north old clay pit.

 Wood ducks are one of my favorite birds. In part because the mal...

The ice on the town pond turned gray over the last day, punk ice.

Naturally, at least for me, it took me to the classic life and death question posed by Clint Eastwood in ``Dirty Harry'': `` `Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you punk?''

In the case of punk ice, I think the qu...

A wall of avian sound--cooing of mourning doves in all idrections, robins from trees and lawns, blackbirds and grackles in trees and flights by the dozen overhead, a few Canada geese cackling in the distance--washed around me and Lady, our family's mutt, as we rambled...

Conditions seemed perfect to stretch out an extended ramble with Lady, our family's mutt, this morning.

And I was right. Temperatures were warm enough yesterday to finish melting off most of the snow, but it was cold enough overnight to refreeze the slop, standing wate...

The title is not meant to suggest that Homer, not be confused with Homer Simpson, is a sap.

But we will get to that.

Figured might as well savor the last morning of winter, or something like that.

So Lady and I stretched out a full ramble. With time change, we rambled...

By Dale Bowman

At one point, Lady just took off and I had the option of falling down and looking like a bronco-buster with his foot caught in a stirrup being dragged or putting my free left arm in the air and looking like a waterskier doing stunts.

I went the route of...