Mid-May Spectacular

Look out the window. Spectacular. Go out there and stare at the plants, the birds, the sunlight.

We must experience and acknowledge the presence of such beauty, energy, perfection, given the chance. Yes, I know, many are suffering, dying, at their wit's end. I'm holed up in my office, looking out the window at the sunlight glowing through the leaves on the maple tree in the front yard.

Hilary and I have been going out to the regional parks on the periphery of the city these last few months. Traffic has been so light that most of them are ten minutes closer than they used to be.

I even made a chart in descending distances figured in minutes to help us make our daily pick: Lake Beyellsbey (54), Sherburne NWR (53), O'Brien State Park (51), Afton State Park (48), Sharr's Bluff (41), Carver Park (34), Tamarack Nature Center (30), Elm Creek (26), Old Cedar Avenue Bridge (24), Hyland Park Reserve (20), Wood Lake (18).

Since the beginning of March I've filed 47 reports on eBird, the website where you can keep track of your bird sightings while also contributing to the Cornell University ornithology database. Maybe this wasn't what governor Walz had in mind with his "stay-at-home" injunction, but we met very few people during these forays, and it helped make the orthodox parts of our confinement more tolerable.

I'm not going to bore you with details of the black-crowned night heron, the Caspian terns, the Harris's sparrow or any of the other species we spotted during these trips because yesterday, out on the deck in the cool clear light of afternoon, I had the pleasure of listening to a Baltimore oriole sing, chirp, and twardle for several hours.

I only saw him once or twice, fleetingly. He spent most of his time in a buckeye tree two houses down. But his lovely voice came through loud and clear, and it occurred to me that no other bird song sounds more like human speech. The variety of rhythms, pitches, and phrases seems endless. One minute he's pleading, the next inquiring, and then, after a silence of several minutes, he might deliver a joyous and extended burst of genuine song. And the voice! It has an unparalleled depth and sweetness.

During my afternoon on the deck I also had the pleasure of watching a Nashville warbler for a good half hour. Warbler sightings tend to be fleeting, but this beauty was in no hurry to move on. The Nashville has a pleasing balance to its coloring and the pronounced eye-ring adds the finishing touch.

From time to time a robin, blue jay, or cardinal would descend to the birdbath, take a sip or two, look around warily, and then hop in. I don't know why this is so much fun to watch. Perhaps because it's so easy to imagine what's going through the bird's mind as it splashes around ruffling its feathers with a pleased but also slightly irritated look on its face.

But that's probably just my imagination.

I had a copy of Aristotle's Ethics with me on the deck, don't ask me why. The author's lines of reasoning are not always sound, but trying to determine precisely what's going awry can be an education in itself. And every now and again a line or two hits the mark. One of Aristotle's main points is that the "highest good" is an activity rather than a possession. He emphasizes the "do" in "doing well."

And I couldn't help jotting down this line in the midst of the avian activity going on all around me:

"The productions of nature have an innate tendency in the direction of the best condition of which they are capable."