Common Birds XXI - American Robin III
Wednesday, May 3rd
Something happened at the pond yesterday that surprised me. Today, I want to see if I can replicate it. On the way back to the pond, I hear an eastern phoebe sing her name in the morning light, chickadees do the same, titmice ring out Peter, Peter, red-winged blackbirds rasp, catbirds sing a song salad, and clear, carrying, and crisp two Baltimore orioles sing back and forth across the road. The mother goose sits her nest with never ending patience. The gander, meanwhile, hangs out with two mallard drakes a little up the stream. The mallard hens are likely also on their nests. The mother robin is out and about.
It’s rained a lot recently, so I’m back to leaping over the puddle and picking my way through the mud. My shoes survive. I walk to the spot where I take pictures, crouch down on my heels, and wait. The pond is still, occasionally rippled by the light touch of a falling bud. After a time, I stand suddenly, and just like yesterday, a ring of ripples erupts around me. About fifteen fish (I assume) startled and dove as I stood, their concentric, overlapping rings the only way I’d ever know they were there.
I like to believe that I am an astute observer of my parking lot, the trail, stream, marsh, and pond. I like to think that I see what others miss in their rush to conduct business (which we pretend is a different word than busyness). This is probably true, but I’ve walked this 2,000 step walk multiple times a day for months and it still surprises me. There is so much that I don’t know and can’t know. The depth of this small strip of earth is unfathomable. I know the names of the birds and their songs, I know the mammals and some plants. And while the plants are unknown, I can still see them and become familiar with them. So much is beyond my perception. A parallel world exists beneath the surface of the water which I will never see, the startled splashes my only glimpse. I am jealous of the kingfisher who can somehow see below the mirrored surface. I want to know, like the robin does, what goes on under my feet. Hundreds of worms wriggle below me and I have no sense of what that dark, porous space is like. My bubble of perception is a half sphere, stopping at the horizon, the surface of water, and the face of the earth. Robins must be able to hear or feel the shifting of the soil. I wonder if their perception feels like a full sphere.
There is nothing like unfathomable depth. It will be ever familiar and ever new, unchanging and changing, infinitely rewarding. None of us can plumb the full depth, but a robin or kingfisher, or mallard might teach me to notice what I cannot perceive. So I will walk, again and again, watching and learning in awe.
