In the first few days of August something happened in the forest outside my bedroom window. Something important. Something effortlessly lost in the ubiquitous white-noise of a busy life.
I try to pay attention to the little things in nature, but even with a degree of vigilance bordering on the pathological, I would surely have missed it had I not been already primed to look for it….or rather, listen for it. When it finally happened it was like a coin dropping into Nature’s jukebox as a familiar song began to play.
Or maybe it was more like a series of soft invitations issued at the periphery of my awareness, tugging at my senses like a friendly Labrador nudging my hand for affection.
“Gentle reminders to pay attention…to pause in my endless hominid doing and just listen to the forest for a moment.”
Ok, this thing I want to tell you about occurred early last Friday morning. I was bustling about the kitchen cooking breakfast and grinding coffee when the soft, sweet ditty of a Rose Robin floated in through the open window. There are few sounds in this world more arresting for its simple, unobtrusive beauty than the clear tinkle of the Rose Robin. It warms my belly like a sip of whisky on a cold, dark night. I love it.
This was the first Rose Robin I’d heard since the long shadows of early May. Not a single call throughout the relative chill of winter. These birds don’t do fake news, they tell it like it is, incorruptible sources of knowledge about weather, climate and astrophysics.
For those of us freaks who listen to birds, the sweet ditty of the Rose Robin heralds the next seasonal gradient out of winter toward the putrid humidity and heat of summer…“the Time of the Midges.” And the Rose Robin isn’t alone in signalling this transition.
Yellow Robins have started their pre-dawn “chop-chop-chop” call, the wild kinetic fury of westerly cold fronts crash across the ranges, Mistletoe birds chase each other pell-mell through the garden and Common Jezebel butterflies sup nectar from our citrus flowers again. All of which inclines me to wonder how, for so many years, I could have missed such an obvious seasonal change?
It is easy to be wise retrospectively I guess. The challenge is to notice the changes as they happen.
Photo credit: Patrick Kavanagh.