Birds

Yesterday it was a flock of robins―a good dozen or so―dancing in my neighbour’s pasture, where his cousin keeps his beef in summer, beside the broken feeder. Back so soon and fat from Patriot Point or Hamilton Park or White Point Garden, low country, South Carolina, where bald cypress and live oak are thickly hung with Spanish Moss. Today it was a nuthatch upside-down on the 100-year-old lilac, back from Muncy, Pennsylvania, and a downy woodpecker returned from the mountains of Virginia, tap-tap-tapping among the barren plums. Feathers, flying, and these tiny warm and beating hearts are surely miracles.