Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 3 · column 1 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
At sunrise on a gray winter morning, a male Cardinal perched on the fence below my study window. First light on the bird made the read feathers glow as if lit from within. I had been looking out the window, waiting for the right words to come; I was writing this column.
What is it about red? The color announces a stop, proclaims danger, brightens the Christmas season, with an “X” tells us we have made a mistake, and announces one of the most beautiful birds in Virginia. Curious business.
The twitchy, angular red bird on the fence reminded me that this bird is a survivor; the Cardinal has taken advantage of the drastic changes man has made to the natural world and is much more common today that it was 300 years ago when Europeans first arrived on this continent.
I cannot summon up a mental picture of the immense forests «my ancestors saw when they arrived. A forest of great trees stretched from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. An early writer claimed that a squirrel could jump from tree to tree and never touch ground on a trip west from the ocean to the mighty river.
Only fragments of that forest remain.
When the first Europeans arrived, tangles of vines and dense shrubs were found only
95.7%