Common Birds II - Snow

Snow falls like Manna, God providing us with what we need: rest, stillness, beauty. Yesterday I was home and saw my wife and cats rather than birds. And it was good.

Today the snow is melting fast, but the wind wants to hold onto winter. Leaving the back door of the office, I see some chipmunks rousing themselves from their hibernation and dashing along the lichen covered rocks of the retaining wall. They know the snow is just passing. Coming down to the stream, I hope to see both herons, but I only see one, the one I’ve seen since January. He looks hunched and grumpy, ready for winter to be over and waking up alone to snow and ice. I hope the other heron will return, and we will wait. Waiting is the heron’s greatest skill. In the part of the stream nearest to me, two Canada geese look at me askance.

The head of the short trail past the pond to the river is flooded. I have to jump across a large puddle which spooks a female mallard. Her swimming flushes out what looks like four hooded mergansers and a common merganser. Mallards are much more comfortable with me than mergansers. The mergansers rush into flight over the footbridge, out over the river, and are gone. I’m frustrated, but it’s okay. There’s tomorrow.

Then, I hear a happy nuthatch. Nuthatches are, of course, my favorite bird. I look up and see the small, broad, white and blue bird foraging along the shaggy branches of a maple. It moves in spirals, as if the branch has a gravity that only exists for the nuthatch. It has a black cap rather than a charcoal cap, meaning he’s a male. And I wait. When you see one nuthatch, look for a second. I hear small acks from a tree on the other side of the trail, look up and see the female. Pairs of nuthatches often mate for life and travel together when they forage. They give these tiny calls (ack ack) as they move, which I think tells the other where they are and how things are going. It reminds me of my wife and I checking in on each other while we work. The river is choppy with wind.

On the way back to the back door of the office, I take a long steel and wooden bridge which connects two parking lots and crosses over a cattail marsh. The marsh is full of water again and the chickadees call and dart. Then, I cut across what’s normally grass but is now snow to get back to my office’s parking lot. The snow shows me that a wild turkey passed this way, too.