This is the year 2020. The year of the mouse! The year of the Olympics1! Did you have nice a New Year’s holiday?
Will and I got together with2 our family on New Year’s Day and on the evening of3 the 2nd, our old friend came to our house and we had a fun little party.
On New Year’s Day, on our birdfeeder4 in the garden, Will saw an Uguisu, a bush warbler. What a nice encounter5 with a special bird on the first day of the year! People think Uguisu is a bird of the spring, but even though our spring is still far away, Uguisu are around.
I didn’t see him (or maybe her!) on the bird feeder, but later when I went out to the garden, I saw a brownish bird with an uncommon silhouet6 flitting7 among the branches of a tree. Later, Will told me that it could be the Uguisu waiting for the other birds to fly away from the bird feeder. I checked it on the Internet, and yes, it was a bush warbler! So I saw Uguisu on New Year’s Day, too.
We both felt we had a nice start of the new year!
… and in the evening, we found a little piece of paper which said "A Teapot" in our mailbox. We knew what it was because Will put a riddle8 on the new year’s cards to his students, which went9 "What word starts with T, ends with T, and has T in it?" However, we don’t know who put it in the mailbox.
Now, it’s our turn to figure out10 the riddle!
～～～～～～～～～
《 Did you know? 》
Uguisu is a little smaller and has a flatter head than sparrows. Our image of its color is pale green like a Japanese confectionary called "Uguisu Mochi", but really the bird with that color is a Mejiro, white eye. As its name implies, it has very nice white rings around the eyes. Very stylish! Uguisu is a much more sober color, sometimes it almost looks brown. When they sing, the first part of the song is inhaled and the latter part is exhaled!
