Common Birds XXX - Carolina Wren
Tuesday, May 23
I am convinced that three hundred mink could slip past me, utterly silent, while the tiny Carolina wren cannot go three feet without shouting as loudly as possible. Three of them are waylaying me this morning at the entrance of the trail. Carolina wrens are smaller than house sparrows, light reddish-brown with white bellies and white eye-stripes. Their tails are as long as the rest of their stumpy bodies and they normally stand straight up. From their long, thin bills spill incessant songs and other sundry sounds. My mom would have called them Jenny wrens growing up, though Jenny wren seems to refer to wrens in general rather than the Carolina wren in particular. These three wren are planted on different trees, tails hoisted like sails, one side angled towards me, and voices bombarding, blasting away. One sings while the other two do their best to roar tiny, raspy growls. Smiling, I walk on, leaving them immensely satisfied with their heroic victory, soon to be passed into song.
Each new day brings new spiderwebs to blindly walk into. I try to pry them off of my face and hair as I stop to look for waterthrushes at the pond’s edge. Branches hang low over the shore, obscuring my vision. The boughs are exuberantly green, robed to feast on light. Orioles, grosbeaks, red-winged blackbirds, warbling vireos, song sparrows, and yellowthroats all ring out their joy. These are God’s gifts.
Leaving, I startle a robin and it sweeps away over the water. As it flies over the pond, fish startle beneath its passing, leaving ripples ringing as a wake. A catbird gives a complaining meow to my left. However long ago someone named this bird the catbird, they knew exactly what my Mopsy cat sounds like when she wants her cronchers. It’s wonderful! Two chickadees land just above my head, singing over the din of their fellow birds. One drops down to the damp earth, investigating the nooks of an exposed root. Then, I see a pair of cardinals in the undergrowth. The male blazes with perfect redness against the pure greenness of young leaves. He moves from branch to branch, staring intently at the forest floor. What are you seeking? Suddenly, I imagine myself from above, white and blue in all the green, looking with the same intensity at the same earth. What am I seeking? What brings me here, day after day? This trail is like liturgy, almost always the same, slowly processing from season to season, yet each day is a chance to know it anew, to be embraced by the familiarity, to sink beneath that embrace, passing into a beautiful universe.
