For the Love of Birds

Many of you might know that English is not my native language. No matter what I do, I am bound to make mistakes, sometimes stupid, sometimes clumsy, sometimes unnecessary, often funny. Since the inception of this blog I had a great and selfless helper - Mary Birchard - who regularly checked my spelling, tried to cut up my unnecessarily long sentences, corrected my “international” prepositions and helped me especially with the tricky (tricky for me) English articles. She often joked that she would leave me two boxes one with “a-s” and the other with “the-s”. Unfortunately, she did not! Mary died suddenly yesterday and I am heart-stricken.
     But Mary left me something else and even more important than English gramar - she initiated all our family into the love of birds. I learned to look around for birds. And especially during my different exotic holidays I used to play with Mary “Can-you-name-this-bird?” game. I would take a picture of a bird, send it to Mary and within few moments she would respond with the name. Always she did it, and she was never wrong. Just a few times she would give two options, and one was always correct.

     I attach a picture of a Pacific Golden Plover which I took on the ancient Hawaiian burial ground in Ka‘u. Golden Plover is one of Hawaiian ‘aumakua, in Greek psychopompoi. May the birds she loved so dearly accompany Mary on her journey!