Songbirds

Overnight, the winter birds found my feeder.  Before the snow, though the ground was bare and brown, they had flitted through the shrubs and pecked at the seed heads in the garden. But the storms that drove us humans into the warm hearts of our homes kept the birds grounded too...and hungry.  

So, rather than purchase the big bags of “mostly millet”, the stuff that leaves the ground under the feeder rank and weedy come summer, in pity, I sprung for the good stuff…..sunflower hearts and cracked corn.  The rosy purple finches and the wintry green goldfinches clung to the perches in defiance of freeloading squirrels while the sooty little juncoes took their chances with what the other birds dropped. Watching them from the kitchen window, I felt slightly less downtrodden by the speed bumps of the season.

“Skylark, have you seen a valley green with spring
Where my heart can go a-journeying
Over the shadows and the rain to a blossom-covered lane?”

….Hoagy Carmichael

Alas, the meadowlarks that stick out the season in northern Missouri, contrary to all common sense, have no such help when the ground is white. Like forlorn hitch hikers, they huddle on the shoulders of our country roads, taking their chances with the passing semis in hopes some grain will blow off a flapping tarp or leaking trap.

I’ve been reading John Eldredge’s new devotional Restoration Year, a year long selection of short devotions that builds on the foundation of his All Things New, a book of wild hope and encouragement.  Like opening a door to warmth and companionship, his book and these short essays are like looking down into the valley green with spring and rain beaded blooms of tulips and quince and redbud.  

I took a screenshot of that page….the January 30 page...which sparkles defiantly with cheerful birdsong when spring is not just one calendar page, but three or four months in the future.  Be hopeful, be confident, and throw those songsters in your yard some seed for their long winter days…..