5:05 a.m. 49 degrees, wind WSW 0 mph. Sky: delightfully overcast; suitable for a Winslow Homer or Thomas Moran painting; detail-rich and colorful; textured and windrowed; cracks and bumps and holes edged with lambent runs of sunlight, shiny like polished silver; lavender accents; just above the hilltops to the south, a line of blush. No mist and almost no running water. Woods: shadowed and cool. Wetlands: greener and drier than yesterday.
After four days roosting behind the barn door, the bat has left; a free spirit. Beneath each of the three light fixtures in the barn and beneath each of the three on the barn porch: a phoebe nest, six of them, all well-preserved; a history of symbiosis. Something for an avian archeologist to contemplate. The nest on the west end of the barn, the end closest to the absent bat, is active. Parents perch on oak limbs just beyond the door, tail flicking, quietly chipping, waiting to foray for flying insects.
Both sides of the road: Stereophonic red-eyed vireos, urgent and tiresome. A bashful blue-headed vireo in a nearby maple, far less enthusiastic, makes his presence know. My neck aches to search for him. A parula warbler in a maple; a rising buzzy song that jumps up a notch at the end; a pole vaulting-song with a final kick over the bar. House wren, appearing to be on Prozac, trims its outpouring; sounds almost bored, almost stoned.
A robin street-stalking picks at items smaller than June bugs. Unfortunately, familiarity has bred disregard. The loss, of course, all mine. Robin, the first bird I met on my parents' suburban lawn. Since then, I've seen them everywhere, from Central Park to Hudson Bay. On Kodiak Island, robins hopped through leaf litter in the shadow of brown bears. In the 1970s, they were rare winter birds that occasionally visited dairy farms; now, they strip winterberries every January in my front yard. During one severe winter in the mid-eighties, clouds of tens of thousands of robins descended on the Everglades; they survived on the red fruit of an invasive shrub called Brazilian pepper. Defecating robins spread pepper seeds. Now, a portion of the multi-billion dollar Everglades restoration effort includes control of ubiquitous Brazilian pepper, whose stranglehold on mangrove jungles is due in part to the discharge of robins.
Currently, the robin in front of me works the roadside, hopping and pecking, flicking leaves. If a Costa Rican came to visit and I showed him an American robin, he'd notice a resemblance to his national bird, the clay-colored thrush. Erect and plump; carries a tune; an inveterate leaf flipper. He'd also notice that a robin is handsome: an Ansel Adams middle-tone gray back; darker head and face; black eyes hemmed by white; bright yellow bill; burnt orange chest and belly; white undertail coverts; tail dark like head with white spots on the corners that flashes when it flies.
Removing blinkers and describing an American robin . . . almost cathartic.