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I saw my first robin driving in the car a week or so back. Since that time, I’ve been seeing them everywhere…
“Creeping, creeping, here and there, / In fields and meadows, everywhere, / Coming up to greet the spring, / And hear the robin redbreast sing;…” A poem about the growing grass from a very long time ago, published in an encyclopedia published by The Holst Publishing Company in 1924.
I’ve been out looking at the condition of the lawn to see how it fared after our harsh winter. We have a nest of robins in the huge evergreen tree that sits on our neighbour’s property. I know because I’ve seen the robins down pecking at the bare spots in the lawn looking for a meal. The tree is absolutely huge. I’ve talked about this monster in my past programs. With it being so high, I am unable to see the nest that is obviously being prepared deep within the safety and security of the large boughs. Last year at this time, we had a nest just outside our kitchen window.
It was well hidden and protected in the lilac tree that grows at the side of our house. When it blooms in late spring, we are rewarded with the intoxicating fragrance of the lilac blooms. When I am at the coffee machine in the morning pouring my first cup, that heady scent comes in on a gentle breeze through the open kitchen window.
At the time the eggs hatched, we enjoyed seeing the male and female birds doting over their brood. Their little open mouths would poke up from deep within the nest in anticipation of a meal from the older robins. And they were voracious in their hunger. No mater how tired the male and female seemed to be after hunting up food, they were constantly ready to forage for more.
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, / I shall not live in vain; / If I can ease one life, the aching, / -or cool one pain, / or help one fainting robin unto his nest again, / I shall not live in vain.” Emily Dickinson.
I did what I could to prevent large crows and cats from discovering the nest. I was watchful over the nest to make sure the mother and hatchlings were safe from predators. I remember one night when we had a fairly large raccoon walk by. It would have been a short climb to the robins’ nest. That night, a hush fell over our lilac tree…
Fortunately, they all survived and one day I found the nest strangely silent. They were all gone. They had tested their wings and flew off. The nest stayed in the branches throughout the summer and autumn and on into the winter. Today it looks ragged and bare. I wondered if some of the over-wintering birds might take up residence but that never happened. When I saw the robins on the lawn I realized that last year’s nests are forgotten. Cervantes wrote: “Ne’er look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.”
“Bess and other insects were humming around them; a butterfly fluttered over the fence and alighted on a dandelion almost at her feet; meadow larks were whistling their limpid notes in the adjoining fields, while from the trees about the house beneath them came the songs of many birds, blending with the babble of the brook which ran not far away. ‘Oh, how beautiful, how strangely beautiful it all is!’ ‘Yes, when you come to think of it, it is real pretty,’ he replied. ‘It’s a pity we get so used to things that we don’t notice ‘em much. I should feel miserable enough, though, if I couldn’t live in just such a place. I shouldn’t wonder if I was a good deal like that robin yonder. I like to be free and enjoy the spring weather, but I suppose neither he nor I think or know how fine it all is.’ ‘Well, both you and the robin seem a part of it,’ she said, laughing. ‘Oh, no, no,’ he replied with a guffaw which sent the robin off in alarm, I ain’t beautiful and never was.’ She joined his laugh, but said with a positive little nod, ‘I’m right, though. The robin isn’t a pretty bird, yet everybody likes him.’ ‘Except in cherry time. Then he has an appetite equal to mine’” An excerpt from a long ago spring recounted in the novel, He Fell in Love With His Wife by Edward P. Roe, published in 1886 by Dodd, Mead, and Company.
With all the ugliness just outside our collective windows in this world, it’s heartening to know that there is beauty if you’re willing to look for it… You might be surprised to discover it’s right under your nose, almost within reach…
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Don Jackson
