Slow down and watch the ordinary become the extraordinary

Matty and I hit the trail on Tuesday right after school. It was warm and very sunny. We were hoping for one more day of spectacular warbler sightings with birdsong sweeping through the forest and us chasing after each trill, but we should have known better. It was 3:30…sort of an off-hour, and we were both a bit tired and hungry, and the height of migration was definitely over (but we refused to admit it). Right off the bat, however, we heard the loud, beautiful song of a Baltimore Oriole and saw him high in a Sycamore…promising! But as we stepped further down the trail, the woods fell strangely quiet. After having experienced the nonstop birdsong of the migrants over the past couple of weeks, the hollow emptiness was foreign. In response, I could feel us picking up our pace, searching for something that was not there, fueled by just a touch of frustration...but then we saw Red sitting in a shaft of sunlight. The saturated color in his feathers was so striking it made us slow down to take a longer look, and finally, as we stopped and watched him, we felt Sweet Nature melting away the frustration (and slight sadness) of knowing spring migration was just about over.




Stepping off the trail and into the grass, we became more engrossed in the Northern Cardinal's extraordinary beauty. Drawn in, we watched him move from branch to branch, Matty with binocs and me framing him in the camera lens. Then we noticed the wriggly green caterpillars in his bill, and even better, we noticed he wasn’t eating them. He was just carrying them around, which could mean only one thing…Papa Red must be delivering the juicy green things to a few hungry mouths! Slowly the male worked his way into the hollow, continuing to hop from branch to branch towards what we hoped would be a nest full of baby Reds. He definitely knew we were watching him, and I felt a bit guilty and wondered if he was taking the long way home trying not to give away the nest’s location, but we couldn’t resist and soon he flew into an overgrown honeysuckle bush and rustled around a bit. When he hopped back out, his bill was empty! We wanted to go down there and peer into the nest to see the babies, but instead, we got back on the trail so the male, who was now chipping loudly, would feel comfortable about leaving the nest site to find more caterpillars for his offspring.




So “ordinary” Red, the same bird who started it all for me with a peanut at my Aunt Mary’s house so many years ago, saved the day and reminded us that there is birding after spring migration, and all you have to do is slow down and observe and you will see the extraordinary.