Things I am grateful for today

• The common but beautiful birds you see when you're meant to be looking at a rare bird that's been blown off course from the other side of the country, or Scotland, or Greenland, or heaven knows where.
• The Northern Harrier standing on a post out in the field with the rare geese, the afternoon light hitting it in a way that makes you truly see the bird in a way you never have before.
• The four billionth Tufted Titmouse that's zipped past while you're hoping to spot the Mountain Bluebird and that you give in and finally take a look at--that big liquid eye looking right back at you as it cocks it head.
• The Chickadee sitting on a branch above the Calliope Hummingbird that should be basking in Mexico but is inexplicably in snowy shoreline Connecticut. Next to the tiny hummer the Chickadee looks like some gigantic mutant from a 1950s sci-fi movie, "Attack of the 30-foot Chickadee!"
• The people who spot these rare visitors and put the word out so everyone can take a look.
• And the International Bird Rescue Research Center and WildRescue. A disturbed person has captured gulls in San Francisco and put tight collars made of cut-up beer cans around their necks. The IBRRC and WildRescue are doing their best to recapture them, cut the collars from their necks, and release them. It would be easy to dwell on the dark things going through the mind of the person who has been cruel to these birds. But watching the rescuers handle a gull so gently while they remove the collar and check it over is enough to make your heart melt.

Things I am grateful for today

The drab little brown female House Sparrow I just saw having a dust bath that could only be described as gleeful. / That there was a local family so generous that a hundred years ago they donated a tract of land near my apartment as a bird refuge. / The fact that robins sound like flutes, and are everywhere. / That there are people who care about baby birds that have fallen out of trees. / Northern Cardinals providing a vivid flash of red in the garden when you least expect it. / That Chickadees and Titmice always seem to go together as a package deal. / And that I just had to stop at an intersection in the middle of downtown to let geese cross the road.

(Drawing of female House Sparrow by Wilhelm von Wright, 1810 - 1887)