Canyon Birds

Canyon Birds

I’m a novice birder, but for several days I’ve been watching the hummingbirds practicing frenzied levitation before their hanging feeders, the vultures slowly surfing the currents above and between the canyon walls, and the indistinguishable wrens and sparrows flitting from limb to limb everywhere I look, morning or evening.

There are 156 bird names listed in my pamphlet, along with codes for the frequency of their sightings: a for abundant, c for common, u for uncommon, o for occasional, and r for rare. The seasons in which they usually appear are included too, along with space to record a birder’s recognition of them.

Although I’m a novice, I’ve been mesmerized by their trills, their flight, their songs at night. How good of God to have made so many of them. And beyond making them, how good he is to care for them as well. These canyon birds are not so productive, and neither have I been for the last few days. The solitary minutes and hours have not yielded up more than a few dozen pages, all told—but I feel a shifting that says they will. The seeds are there.

The words are not abundant yet, and as I reread them they seem quite common (c), but my God is decidedly uncommon (u) and his beauty is more than occasionally (o) fine. There’s time for what he’ll do, and I trust that he will provide. I can wait. The provision will come.

Wendell Berry writes,

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord. . . . .

Love someone who does not deserve it. . . .

Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts. . . .

Practice resurrection.^a

Whatever plans I came here with have scattered to the wind. Just the songs remain, and they are enough. They will always be enough.

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Matthew 6:26, ESV

^a Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” in The Country of Marriage (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2013), 14–15.