Common Birds XXIX - Reintroduction
What is our attention for? This series on common birds is, in part, an answer to this question. It’s easy to find voices saying we should reclaim our attention, but I want to give an example of what life is like when attention is given to the physical world or animals, plants, earth, air, and especially birds rather than digital worlds. Hopefully, it can serve as a foretaste of what you could see when you give attention to the ordinary, everyday birds around you. What is our attention for? To notice, marvel, and give thanks.
I am particularly blessed that my business park is located on the Merrimack River and that it is designed with enough space between the parking lots for wilderness to breathe, to exist. In a typical walk, I cover a half mile. Leaving the back door, I follow a stone retaining wall to a small creek. Trees run above the wall and along both sides of the creek’s gully, a dappled capillary of life. A footbridge spans this creek, which I cross. Then, I follow a road along a wider stream. The stream is slow and meandering, overgrown with tall spring grasses. A mallard drake snoozes by the near shore, tucking his shimmering, deep green head against his back. Mother and Father Canada goose eye me suspiciously as their flock of goslings, hatched in the stream three weeks ago, feed on the grasses, unaware or blissfully unconcerned by my presence. They’re adorable yellow-gray puffballs, rapidly nearing lanky adolescence.
From the stream, I cross a parking lot to reach the trailhead. As usual, the parking lot is rimmed with robins staring intently at the ground. The air is filled with the rasping of red-winged blackbirds, the clear bells of Baltimore orioles, and the sliding songs of rose-breasted grosbeaks. I catch the orange fire of an oriole flashing past. The trail runs past what I call the pond. It’s where the stream outlets into the Merrimack, broadening and further slowing. The outlet is narrow, overshadowed with trees and a wooden footbridge. Now, I hear the olive warbling vireos, a black and orange American redstart, gray catbirds, and brown song sparrows. Robins rush through the underbrush. Water laps against the earth. The air is cooler.
In the middle of the trail is a mourning dove! I’ve been walking this trail almost everyday for months and I’ve never seen one back here. They’re almost always by the bridge over the cattail marsh, but not today. Mourning doves are large for songbirds, a little bigger than a robin, creamy brown, and somehow simultaneously possessing understated elegance and a knack for looking dopey. The dove bursts off of the ground in a cacophony of flapping, and makes an ungainly descent onto a branch. I always read the Holy Spirit descending ‘like a dove’ to be peaceful and gentle. Then I watched an actual dove land at a bird feeder. They’re like helicopters: noisy, throwing up dust, and causing everyone to duck out of the way. The open air is their domain. Once they get up to speed, they shape themselves to the wind, cutting through the air with power and grace. Perhaps that was how the Spirit descended.
Ahead, the trail forks. To the right is the wooden bridge over the outlet of the pond. To the left, a tiny beige crosses the winding outlet of the cattail marsh. I go left, hearing more videos and redstarts. On the bridge, I watch some catbirds make their way down to the water which is sweeping in and out, like the marsh is breathing. I don’t know what causes the water to constantly switch directions. A mystery for another day.
Heading back, I crouch at the side of the pond. I saw a northern waterthrush here yesterday, and I’m hoping to see one again. Waterthrushes are tiny warblers which are adapted to be wader-bird. They even do the same butt waggle that woodcocks and spotted sandpipers do. I don’t see a waterthrush, but I do see a muskrat! It’s on the far side of the pond, swimming towards the outlet. At this distance, you don’t see muskrats, you see their wake rippling counter to the normal waves coming in off of the river. I head to beat it to the bridge. Muskrats scare easily if you move, but if you’re still, even in plain sight, they don’t seem to notice you’re anything remarkable. I get to the bridge and wait. About forty seconds later, I see the wake coming around a corner, and a few moments later the muskrat swims into view. When they’re relaxed, swim with their head and back up out of the water. Their thick tails wave back and forth, propelling them forward and leaving eddies behind. It’s a cute mix between a rat and a beaver, fur streaked and matted with water. I watch the muskrat pass under the bridge and into the river. It hugs the shore. If it wanted to go, it’s not too far to the ocean.
