Our neighbors came to lunch with their personable, twin four-year-old misters – to dine on a melange of kale, sweet potato, cous cous and shitake mushrooms – no, the tots didn’t eat that, of course, though they managed a bite of grilled cheese.

Creatures great and small. Small, the twin boys. Smaller still, the neighbors’ two-week-old chicks, fur balls, feathers just beginning to sprout.

A half dozen all told, they represent a handful of varieties, all adorable and all soon enough to be productive egg layers.

On the way up the hill to see the baby birds, looking up into the brimming sky, just by the shy, shallow daytime moon, a creature  stretched its wings, bright white head to bright white tailfeathers. A bald eagle, performing swoop de doo’s with its dun-colored mate. Crisscrossing the air, coming together, falling apart, coming together again in a sequence of performance moves you’d have to be a raptor in love to understand.

Yes, spring is coming, I swear it.