The hayfield was high, the stream low for mid-May as I descended the compacted farm road to a sunken meadow I visit daily with dogs Lily and Buddy, along a placid stretch of the Green River, still, knee-deep flat-water pooling above a sharp S-turn.

I was two-thirds of the way down a short decline to the Christmas-tree field when I heard a duck and spotted a mallard drake flying low along the water. It touched down 100 yards downstream, tantalizing Lily as she stood motionless along the bank, watching. Then the duck again flew when it caught me breaking into the clearing. The irritated green-head elevated high over the tall, streamside softwoods and circled the 10- or 12-acre plot, scolding us from above, eventually drawing Buddy’s attention along the back edge of the field. When he heard the quacking, he looked skyward, saw the duck and sprinted below it back in our direction. He gave up on the airborne duck upon reaching us and proceeded along what has become a familiar route, following a thin riverbank woods line to a small camper and circling back toward the truck along an alder wetland lip framing this quiet slice of Connecticut Valley paradise, songbirds everywhere. Along the loop, Buddy flushed red-winged blackbirds, starlings, robins, you name it, with his joyous, light ballet gait.

As we swung north down the homestretch — Buddy running big, working wide quarters, still flushing everything in his path — I noticed him stop and focus on something, nose high, ears alert. He lowered his head, moved in slowly toward the base of an infant Christmas tree and flushed a mallard hen a foot or two from his snout. Lily, 10 yards behind, noticed the flying duck and tore after it as Buddy watched briefly before sticking his nose into the spot vacated by the duck. Curious, I called him off with “leave it.” He picked up his head, caught Lily sprinting over the washed-out riverbank and promptly followed her, giving me an opportunity to investigate his find. Sure enough, a nest with five large eggs. I skirted the site as the scolding hen and drake circled above, called the dogs and went back to the truck for the return trip home.

On the walk up the road to a closed, galvanized gate, I noticed another mallard drake floating on the flat water above the S-turn. Perhaps he too had contributed to that nest. One never knows.

I guess, now, for a week or so, I’ll have to find another spot to run the dogs. Those eggs will soon become nestlings, and I wouldn’t want to disturb them at the wrong time, before they’ve found river protection. By then, the sunken meadow will be back to normal, providing a secluded natural playground where dogs can romp free and unrestrained, the way it’s meant to be, for bird and beast and man.

With Bessie and Ringo gone to doggie heaven, I was down to one English Springer Spaniel until this week, when a 10-month-old male from fancy breeding came my way through a field-trialer and wing-shooting friend. What sold me on this animal was his pedigree back to 1996 national champion Denalisunflo’s Ring, not to mention many other American and Canadian national champs. But Ring, the sire of my late dog Ringo (grandfather to Bessie), was the clincher. A Roy French champion, he had legendary stamina and spirit.

While I can’t deny this new dog arrived with retrieving “issues,” I’m sure I’ll be able to correct them with a lot of TLC and little pressure. I’ll just make it fun for him to retrieve a tennis ball or stick off the Green River shoreline, then show him the ropes in the field, let Lily be a model for displaying the joys of retrieving from thick, wet tangles. This new new pet comes with the name Buddy, which I’ll keep. I didn’t name Ringo, either. He came registered as “Sunrise Ringo,” then became Ringy, Bingy or Bingo, depending on my mood. The new guy is not registered but responds to Buddy, so why change it? Although still working on it, his name will probably be something like Old Tavern Farm’s Budding Dynamo or Hey Buddy. That works for me. Maybe I’ll even start with the kennel he came from, Poets Seat. We’ll see.

I always greet a new project with enthusiasm and confidence. I can tell already this guy will be easier than old Ringy, who could find, flush and retrieve birds with the best of them, bringing me immense joy along with some minor headaches over 13 years. This new guy looks a lot like Ringy, runs as big but, from first impressions, is more biddable, comes when called and responds well to my stag-horn whistle. I acquired both dogs at a little less than a year old from frustrated trainers, who typically seek easy students and sell the more difficult ones. Capable of being difficult myself, I have empathy for that personality type. Plus, the fact is that the spirited ones with an independent streak often turn out to be superior animals in the long run. We’ll see with Buddy.

This I can say for sure: If he’s half as good as Ringy, he’ll be great. My guess is he’ll be better.

That “Drill, baby, drill” chant popularized by frothing, taunting, right-wing crowds during the McCain presidential run has been conspicuously silent in recent weeks, huh? Yep, the silence is deafening. Where have the proponents of offshore oil-drilling gone now that the Gulf of Mexico is swamped in environmental disaster, millions of gallons of crude oil fouling the ecosystem, potentially headed our way via the Gulf Stream … heaven forbid?

So tell me, did anyone ever believe offshore drilling was safe and clean, that people who thought otherwise were hysterical loons? That’s what Sarah Palin and her Republican legions would have liked us to believe. But when you consider that heavy hitters like Florida’s own Jeb Bush, certainly no liberal, wants nothing to do with offshore drilling along his coast, it ought to tell you something loud and clear: Yes, there is potential for disaster. We’re living it now, have lived it before, will live it again. Trust me.

So, tell me, who in their right mind would trust multi-billion-dollar oil corporations to police themselves, make certain all the safeguards and oversight are in place and working to avert disaster? Who? And who would trust anything Halliburton had a hand in? Not me. Doesn’t it all come down to profit, not conservation, in the perspective of CEOs and investors? Don’t corporations make more money when the fisher cat’s guarding the hen house? Of course. So who would trust the oil industry, buoyed now and then by shifting political winds? It’s a never-ending gotcha game. One administration takes over and enforces or enacts watchdog regulations, then another comes in and turns its back, lets things slide and — BAM! — another dreadful “accident” that likely could have been avoided with due diligence, inspection and conscientious oversight, all of which tend to cut into profit margins.

When I think of manmade disasters like the one ravaging the Gulf today, my focus unfortunately turns to a similar catastrophe potentially waiting to happen next door, at Vermont Yankee, along the border in neighboring Vernon, Vt., just a calm northern breeze away. Could a meltdown occur at that geriatric plant? Has enough radioactive pollution already been released into the water, the air and soil to compromise our health? Don’t dismiss such questions as insane. There is much we do not know, are not being told, will never be told. Then those who shout it in the public square are called crazy. You can’t believe a word the public-relations men and lobbyists say. Those who take their rhetoric as gospel are misguided fools. Energy corporations cannot be trusted. They’re capitalists, not conservationists, no matter what they tell you.

And, yes, hate to say it (not really) but that includes snake-oil salesman Matthew Wolfe, our friendly biomass man — you know, the one who supposedly has Franklin County’s best interests in mind. It’s a joke, not just toxic smoke, something else he has no short supply of.

Sorry, fellas, not in my backyard. Why don’t you send it to Texas or Oklahoma, Alabama or Mississippi or South Carolina, places that deserve it.

I enjoyed an idyllic, restful weekend, reading studiously under bright sunny skies in the comforts of home, pleasing natural stimuli, sights and sounds, everywhere. Does it get any better?

My wife was out of town visiting grandsons Jordan and Arie, providing me with plenty of time to read a fascinating book about birds and their anthropomorphic ways. I purchased it noontime Friday at World Eye, was delighted to find a copy of the new release in stock, and delved right in upon returning home, not even waiting for my wife’s departure to the People’s Republic of Vermont, that great little state with independent Yankee DNA flowing back to Ethan Allen and friends. The book immediately seized me. I couldn’t put it down; was so committed, in fact, that I awoke at first light Saturday and Sunday mornings, dressing warmly, hat and all, windows wide open, before laying back on a leather couch to read under artificial light, serenaded throughout by sweet, incessant cardinal melodies, front and back, stereophonic, uplifting and, yes, even invigorating. What a way to start the day.

During intermittent breaks, I spotted a bright red male bird perched in the burning bush and sugar maple out front, later in the forsythia and large fir tree out back, so I knew some of the joyous tunes were his. Or were there two or three or more? I suspect a nesting female or two were also singing their happiest spring tunes, but I never saw one. Still, the songs were better than anything that could have been delivered by my clear Pres Speakers, innovative surround-sound units created totally by the hands and mind of old friend Mark Pieraccini, a man who loves baseball like no other. Well, I used to love it, too, maybe as much as he, perhaps even more. But now, consumed by other stuff, baseball’s behind me. I view it as kids’ stuff, great while it lasted, maybe even better than great; for had I been a songbird back then, I would have whistled rapturous tunes. No doubt about it.

Isn’t it strange how this new book, one I would recommend to anyone and am here discussing – “The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy,” by Vermont naturalist Bernd Heinrich – came to my attention? It all started with e-mail correspondence between me and a faraway, foreign cyber pal, during philosophical discussion about Christianity, the three forms of Greek love (eros, agape and philia), and monogamy. At one point in this enticing correspondence freshet, I questioned the popular myth we’ve all heard about birds mating for life, said it made no sense that nature would construct so rigid a rule when the goal of mating and courtship is to maintain and strengthen species. I wrote that I had been told for years not to hunt wood ducks because they mated for life, would never find another once their “first love” was gone. I told my faraway friend I had never believed it, viewed it as pure nonsense, even from my own mother’s mouth, because it violated the basic tenets of nature - my personal god, the only one that can drop me to my knees. I viewed the doubtful bird-monogamy concept as propaganda that fit snugly and conveniently into the same Christian Doctrine I rejected as a gullible peach-fuzzed lad. They tried to snare me back then and failed. I believe I’m a better man for it. Certainly not a true believer. Far from it.

But let us not digress. After stating my case in writing, off the cuff, about ornithological matters I knew little about, I was feeling a little insecure, like maybe I was talking through my, well, you know what. After all, there I was, basically an autodidact, certainly no academic, communicating with a world-renown doctor of science who probably knew more about the lifetime-mating theory than I. Maybe some birds do mate for life, I thought. Possibly she knew it to be so, would view me as a fool for suggesting otherwise. So I went to Google and started hunting information with different keywords – combos like “birds” “lifetime mates” or “birds” “monogamy.” Sure enough, up popped Heinrich’s latest book, fresh off the Harvard Press. I had to read it, and did.

My weekend reading chores began each morning in the west parlor before the sun peeked over the eastern tree line. Then, before 9, I’d move to a comfy backyard table in the alcove formed between barn and woodshed. There, catching hot rays through a clear blue sky, I was serenaded by some of the birds I was reading about, mostly cardinals. It was surreal, distant  rattle of the stream, maybe 100 feet away, adding soft percussion, like brushes petting a snare drum. At times, the cardinals’ song would distract me, pull me away from Heinrich’s prose. My eyes would stay focused, not my mind, which would go briefly elsewhere, thinking about the cardinals and what all the singing meant, maybe wandering further off to more complex matters. But I always found my way back to the book and regained focus, my goal maximum comprehension, not always easy with your mind awhirl.

Fact is, despite reading a detailed account of bird-nesting behavior, I never really understood why those cardinals were so happy and vocal. It had to have something to do with nesting and mating, I thought, but why exactly they were so vociferous was above my pay grade. Then, Monday afternoon, the singing abruptly stopped after my daily feeding trip to the kennel and pooch Lily. I had heard their blissful songs throughout the day while reading the new Rolling Stone, and had several times through the back windows seen a brilliant male perched brightly on a dead fir limb 10 or 12 feet off the ground. All had been quiet when I walked through strong, blustery winds to the cookshed, where I opened the 30-gallon plastic tub, took a scoopful of Iams and dumped it into a Griswold No. 8 skillet for Lily. After greeting her, tail wagging, at the kennel door and placing the skillet at the back right corner, I returned toward the woodshed and spotted a faraway clump of something that had not been on the ground below the fir tree during the outbound trip. As I approached the tall tree towering over the barn roof, I could see it was a bird’s nest. I picked it up and found underneath the remains of three or four broken blue eggs, right below the perch used many times by the male cardinal. A coincidence? Who knows? Not likely, though, in my mind.

Being no ornithologist, I could not say for sure that the fallen nest belonged to cardinals. Northern cardinal eggs I Googled were cream colored with brown speckles, not solid blue, and cardinal nests were not constructed like the one I found. But I knew the singing had stopped after the nest fell. So my guess at the time was that it was those cardinals’ nest, and that the singing would resume when another was built, a new clutch laid. Call it deductive reasoning, which, at the time, was all I had. Kind of like my uninformed opinion that birds do not mate for life. That suspicion was confirmed by Heinrich, a veritable expert. He says birds are monogamous by necessity, not choice; and that even after they’ve secured a partner for mating season, cuckoldry is not uncommon. Imagine that! I shudder at the thought, then break into a wry grin. For the umpteenth time, an interesting discovery has tickled my armpit. What discovery? Well, the knowledge that sometimes you don’t need a gilt-framed diploma to figure things out. Common sense often suffices, is more than enough. That fallen nest may have been a robin’s, or maybe even a robin’s nest under consideration or already populated by cardinals. Possible, I guess, but would need more research for a definitive answer. What I know for sure, though, is that the cardinal singing went silent after that nest tumbled to the turf. Then all was quiet for more than 24 hours, not a peep anywhere within earshot. Everything changed following Tuesday’s damaging, late-afternoon rainstorm when, sometime after 5, the singing resumed like it had never stopped. By Wednesday morning, sweet cardinal tunes could be heard all around me; from my yard, front and back, my neighbors’ yards, across the brook – a cheerful symphony in dynamic stereo. I looked out and caught two frisky scarlet males involved in a chase from tree to tree, bush to bush, through the front yard, one right on the other’s tail, both low to the ground, the one in back scolding the pursued with a staccato chipping sound. Maybe the chaser had been cuckolded, heaven forbid. Nature’s way, it seems.

I again pondered why the singing had resumed and what had stopped it for more than a day? It must have had something to do with that fallen nest, or perhaps another, unseen, that had tumbled down in the same tree-swaying wind.

Then again, when you think of it, does it really matter? Isn’t it sometimes better not to know? Nature’s mysteries are entertaining, intriguing and capable of wildly spinning your wheels to a shrill scream. Usually, that’s  good enough for me.