I’m not sure I’m fully in sync with this Friday bird blogging thing, in part because I’m not much of a birder, or much of a photographer. And also, it’s not Friday.

courtesy National Park Service, White Sands National Monument

There’s a family of roadrunners (Geococcyx californianus) living in a bamboo patch behind some apartments up along the bike trail I ride in the mornings. This is high-grade urban nature – the bamboo sorta got loose from the back patios of the apartments, I’m thinking, crept under the back fence and established itself on the patch of dirt between the fence and the bike trail. And the roadrunners have made it their home. It’s not uncommon to see them, but this year they’ve been looking especially fat and happy.

I had this friend years ago in South Pasadena, an old Catholic Italian-American woman. We were walking in the neighborhood, and I commented on the tenacity of a baby palm tree growing over between the sidewalk and the railroad tracks. These palms were amazing, the way they poked up through the gravel on the roadbed by the tracks. “The life force is strong,” my friend said. She was right.