In Celebration of the Morning Chorus

When the pandemic fully engulfed my town, along with much of the rest of the world in March, 2020, forcing everyone to shelter-in-place, the one bright spot (to me) was the slow but steady return of the morning chorus of birdsong, along with an increase in nightly visits from opossums, bobcats, wild boar, coyotes and yes, the occasional mountain lion, along with those creatures who'd always paid my garden (and garbage bins) regular nocturnal visits, meaning raccoons, along with deer and my neighbor's huge orange marmalade, Tango. The occasional grunt or yip or growl from the darkness, or the mad chittering of hummingbirds at dusk as they made one last pit-stop at my feeders was a reminder that the wild world was trying, and in some cases, succeeding in reclaiming some of what it had lost over the previous decades of unchecked human growth. I came across this illustration and quote a year ago, thought it was wonderful and timely and so shared it on my facebook page and in my twitter feed. Then, as facebook does, it regurgitated it as a memory a few days ago.

The morning chorus has sadly faded a bit over the past months, as we humans reemerge from our enforced isolation, the chirps and twitters disappearing into the background hum of traffic and such. But as we head into another winter and fears of more surges, we, as a species, need to remember what the birds have never forgotten, that we can heal the world through joy and that the world is meant to be celebrated, one birdsong at a time. We just need to take the time to listen.