On Birding & Time

The air is autumn apple crisp and the sun is glowing softly through a blanket of downy clouds.

I was the first car in the parking lot. I guess not many others shared the same thought that I had for starting a Tuesday morning.

In fairness, most days I wouldn’t have had the thought either. I’m trying to do better. Well, feel better. I, like so many, have found myself stuck in a pattern of actively doing things that I know aren’t good for me, helpful for my mental health, or things that I know will only make things worse.

Yet, I know the things that do help. I know what makes me happy. I know what I love. I just, I don’t know…having an awareness about it comes with a sense of guilt like I’m engaging in self-sabotage.

I’m walking down a path no more than 6 feet wide, not long after a deer if the tracks are any indication. On my right is a small wetland. Snake grass and cattails, adorned by the occasional red osier dogwood. On my left, the water quickly drains as the lichen armored alder forest takes hold. Color bursts from the ground like geysers in the form of sporadic marsh marigolds.

There: Two orange-beaked yellow birds, one capped with black, the other a color resembling what’s left when a yellow marker picks up black ink. They’re perched on two spindly, low-hanging branches of an indecisive red oak which juts sharply to the right ⅓ way up before correcting itself back upward. It’s a male and female American Goldfinch.

They make a dive, skimming the surface of the grass below as they make their way to a birch tree across the path with a bouncy undulation like that of a beating heart. Presumably, a breeding pair judging by their nearly identical call in flight.

I’d recognize that sound anywhere. Where are you?

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