Three wishes

Some sparrows in a field gone to brush.  Any sparrow will do.

A wren nest-building and singing.

A quiet moment sharing an old abandoned stonewall with a chipmunk.

Thank you, Lord.
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John Burroughs on Walking

"We are unwilling walkers.  We are not innocent and simple hearted enough to enjoy a walk.  We have fallen from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies.  It cannot be said that as a people we are so positively sad or morose or melancholic as that we are vacant of that sportiveness and surplussage of animal spirits that characterized our ancestors, and that springs from full and harmonious life - a sound heart in accord with a sound body.  A man must invest himself near at hand and in common things, and be content with a steady and moderate return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheerful heart and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth.  This is a lesson the American has yet to learn - capability of amusement on a low key.  He expects rapid and extraordinary returns.  He would make the very elemental laws pay usury.  He has nothing to invest in a walk;  it is too slow, too cheap.  We crave the astonishing, the exciting, the far away, and do not know the highways of the gods when we see them - always a sign of the decay of the faith and simplicity of man."

from:  John Burroughs' America
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Anthropomorphism? Don't think so.

At first light I went outside to sit on the patio and enjoy my morning coffee.   A group of tiny ants  were moving among some leftover crumbs on the table near my chair. Absent-mindedly I reached out with a finger to crush one ant, and then a second.  Instantly the ants scattered, running in various directions.  I had not moved the table during my attack.  Nor did I speak or even breathe upon them.  Yet the escaping ants knew that their lives were in danger.  It seemed to me that they were able to communicate with each other.  They were capable of making sounds which I could not hear.  They understood danger and they knew fear.  Not instinctively, but from a warning.
Naturalists have known for sometime that elephants are capable of feeling grief and anger and loyalty.  They know that the elephant's trunk is used, not only to bring food to the mouth, but to identify other animals.
Recently scientists released a study about the lives of elephants under observation in an African preserve protected by the State.  The new knowledge reveals that elephants communicate using sounds far below the frequency range of humans.  They can speak without our hearing and knowledge, and these sounds can be heard by other elephants up to a mile away.
I find this discovery exciting, even uplifting.  I have long believed that the flora and fauna of the world have a purpose other than to be foils for man's ego, or to be exploited for man's greedy uses.  Despite teachings in the Old Testament I believe that God has a purpose for everything He put on this Earth.  Who knows how patiently He waits to see if we will ever know what those purposes are?

The renowned anthropologist Loren Eiseley relates an incident he observed which he calls :The Judgement of the Birds."
"...I had slogged through fern and pine needles for half a long day, and on the edge of a little glade with one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump.  Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.
     "The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep.  When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral.  I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
    " The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling's parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing.  The sleek black monster was indifferent to them.  He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment, and sat still.  Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern.  But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
    " No one dare to attack the raven.  But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved.  The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries.  They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer.  There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew.  He was a bird of death.
     "And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
     "The sighing died.  It was then I saw the judgement.  It was the judgement of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented.  I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged.  For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence.  There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush.  And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten.  Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing.  They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful.  They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven.  In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death."

Would that people could do as well.
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Robins

The Field Guides report that the American robin is a common winter resident in south Florida but, for reasons that surpass our comprehension, we see robins in our neighborhood only at migration time, and even then, as a sometime event.
This spring, however, was very different. The sightings at migration time began the same as other years. A sizeable flock of robins appeared on the lawn and hopped about searching for food. We have three bird baths grouped together under the branches of a Senegal date palm (phoenix reclinata). Robins drank and bathed in happy communal groups and then exchanged places with those foraging on the lawn.
I saw that the water level in the baths was almost nil for the intensive use they received, but I was reluctant to refill them for fear of scaring the birds away. I was starved for the sight and sound of robins and I knew that, as in other years, once this flock was gone there might be no more until fall migration.
Then commerce intervened. A landscaping company, contracted to care for my neighbor’s yard, appeared with their roaring mowers and noisy blowers and whining trimmers. The songbirds fled.
I went outside to scrub and clean and refill the three baths. I told myself that another flock might come along in a day or so.
The landscapers finished and withdrew. An hour passed. Then - the robins were back! They were everywhere and the baths were crowded again! They seemed happier and more excited by their good fortune than they had seemed in the earlier visit but I may have been projecting my own feelings onto them.
I enjoyed their company until twilight when they began to drift away. Just before dark, I cleaned and refilled the baths for the resident birds to use in the day to come. Looking northward for a few moments, I visualized the robins in flight in the night sky, thanked them for their company, and said farewell.
The next day began with another flock of robins.  Or perhaps it was the same flock.   I say that because we had robins for a total of nine consecutive days!  This has never happened before and I believe it was the weather and that mysterious signal system which tells birds when it's time to migrate to nesting grounds.  It seems improbable that nine different flocks would stop in the same back yard for nine days in a row.
For the nine days the robins were here, south Florida had unusually cold weather with frost in the interior region.  Simultaneously, in the north, there were numerous snow storms including the record-setting snowfall earlier this month.
In any case, I was kept busy cleaning and refilling the bird baths.  I discovered that my doing so did not frighten the birds at all.  They simply pulled back and waited for me to leave.
All over now.  Great enjoyment while it lasted.
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