Of damp starkness and bright red

The brilliant red cardinal has been on those bare branches for much of today.

I saw him several times from my own, warmer perch – I, resting on the couch in the living room and covered in blankets, trying to get over a cough; him, sitting there in the stark dampness. The grey drapery of a wet winter day adds to the contrast of the cardinal’s red feathers. Interestingly, I was just going through photos from the past year the other day and came across a photo of a male cardinal sitting in the same bush.

Is it the same cardinal? Is that one of a pattern of branches upon which he alights in his circuit in our neighborhood?

I just learned that cardinals are not migratory. That explains their representative presence on Christmas cards depicting snow-laden branches with a beautiful cardinal.

Those branches are just grey now – my red companion having flown off. I guess he rightly figured I wasn’t going to fill the empty, nearby feeder –not today. No, I’ll just sit here on my blanketed perch and keep looking.