The mornings are gray and misty with soft puffs of smoke-like clouds lifting off the marshes and ponds. Scientists explain away the magic by telling us the mist comes from the discordance of cold hitting warm but if we allow our child minds some roaming room we see the land of fairies and wizards rising up before us. It doesn’t surprise us to see a deer standing still in the grass at the edge of the field or to hear the hoot of a great horned owl at twilight when we are in our magic minds. The sun and the moon and the wind and the forest all dance to an orchestration our imaginations easily sway in rhythm to while voices of unheard but articulate thoughts sing in harmony and bliss. The driver behind me hits the horn and I am jolted back to the ribbon of dark asphalt road before and behind me. The marsh is beautiful but I must keep my eyes and ears on the road or I’ll end up in a marsh ditch, which isn’t exactly the sort of harmony I was thinking of.

     Some of us were lucky enough to grow up in ways that honored a deep connection to nature and we have carried that with us no matter where we were with our lives. For me there was a connection with birds that began when I was a very young child and which lives on in me today. I call myself a casual birder. I know many birds and bird songs at a glance or with a listen but I keep no lists. I don’t rush to see unusual birds spotted in unusual places and I don’t get particularly excited by “life” birds, birds that I haven’t seen before. My delight comes with the unexpected but also with the long familiar. I am as excited to see the chickadees arrive each morning as I am to see my first rose breasted grosbeak of the season. A covey of quail can give me shivers and a mockingbird singing at midnight makes my heart swell. I love to come across an owl but am just as happy to see the young red tailed hawk I’ve seen every day for months. I am happy knowing the birds are willing to share their world with me and that I have these constant if brief glances into their incredible realm.

     I have told this story here before but when I was a child my grandmother gave me a set of Audubon cards that had paintings of birds on one side and descriptions and life histories on the other. I was eight years old and sat in bed early each morning looking at these pictures, reading the stories and watching out the window to see what birds would appear as the seasons changed. We lived in Hyannis and had a yard filled with old trees. Out back was a small field and down the dirt road was a pond. We had a surprising variety of birds and at eight years old I already knew the common birds such as chickadees, blue jays, starlings, house sparrows, purple finches and goldfinches. In those days purple finches were more common than house finches and pine siskins were regular visitors to our feeders.

     One morning I awoke to a racket outside my window. It was winter and the branches of the big tree next to the house were bare. On this morning, however, the tree was full of birds; big, fat yellow birds with fierce looking faces. I knew right away they were evening grosbeaks. You would think Santa had just arrived, the way I jumped out of bed and got my parents up to come see. The flock of a hundred or so grosbeaks spent several weeks cleaning out our feeder and over the next five or six years “our” grosbeaks returned each winter like clockwork. We moved then and more development came and we only saw grosbeaks on rare occasions but I have never stopped hoping to see one as the winter snows begin to fall.

     This week there was a big hubbub where I work. A female evening grosbeak was spotted at the feeder! About a dozen full grown people fell all over themselves trying to get out to the feeder window to see her. She was gone. I hung around talking to some friends for awhile and then all of a sudden there she was, fluttering at one of the feeders but unable to get a grip. She hung around in the bushes a bit and finally ended up feeding on the ground. She looked so small and seemed so shy, just a shadow of the big, bold birds I remember from my childhood. She made me unbelievably sad even (maybe especially) as everyone else was excited to add her to their life lists.

     Times change and so do the populations and travels of birds and animals. Often these days these changes seem to bring us a bit closer to poverty, a bit closer to loneliness. I wonder as I drive along the misty road whether my little grandsons will ever look out their windows and see anything so grand as a hundred grosbeaks in a winter tree. I’m afraid their lives will be much poorer without such a sight and I hope they will at least find some magic in a misty morning alongside the marsh.