four and twenty

red-winged blackbirds, up in a tree not a pie!  You are seeing only a fraction of the tree and its many limbs filled with blackbirds.  Flocks of them are heading north these last two days, but some will stay here for the summer.  They make quite a racket, but it takes many of them to equal the calls of the sandhill cranes, whom I have heard but not seen for the last few days. 
It was a beautiful morning today with fog to the east and this completely clear sky to the west.  
In an odd coincidence, today is the Orthodox feast of the forty martyrs of Sebaste.  In Russia this saint's day was traditionally commemorated by making a pie with forty skylarks.  In the state of Texas, USA, there is a church dedicated to these 4th century martyrs: http://www.40martyrs.org/
If you wish to read a "history,"  a marvelous story of the martyrs, go to: http://ocafs.oca.org/FeastSaintsViewer.asp?SID=4&ID=1&FSID=100706