“It carries the sky on its back”, wrote Henry David Thoreau about the bluebird. Missouri’s state bird since 1927, I rarely see them, except on our state license plates. Starlings are at fault for this. In 1927, starlings could only be found in a hundred mile radius around New York City. New York City starlings, oh my! In the intervening years, these more aggressive birds have quickly crowded out the bluebird by stealing its nesting sites. Now bluebirds survive only when special starling proof nesting boxes are provided. The Shaw Nature Reserve provides these boxes, hence this post’s picture of a bluebird. QED

Anne and I bicycled today. It was another gorgeous day in paradise, I mean Saint Louis. Not settling for just a turn or two around Forest Park, we ventured downtown. Ostensibly, our goal was to pick up where we left off, on last month’s fiber crawl. We soon discovered that most art galleries are closed on Sunday, or at least the few we visited were. The last one on our list was Craft Alliance in the Loop, but while we noshing next door at the Bread Co, first a couple of police cars and then an ambulance pulled up, lights all a flashing. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and headed for home. It was fun seeing parts of town that we don’t normally see. We got 25 miles.