A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES!

Today there are robins everywhere! The yard is filled with 'em! A darting, scratching, red-breasted multitude, eager, animated, as perkily alive and welcome as the warm sunshine streaming through the sycamores. 

Perhaps their visitation is a direct result of so glorious a wealth of late-January sunshine…or maybe the sunshine itself is here because the robins are out and about and have willed it into being through the sheer natural force of their ebullient spirit. 

Who really knows the truth about such matters? But in the strong, lustrous light, their plump breasts glow a rich, fiery orange, almost the hue of some of that rusty looking gold they pull from the Black Hills of the Dakotas.

I do know they're wholeheartedly appreciated!

Immediately after New Year's, I began a necessary three-plus weeks of various eye-prep measures prior to upcoming surgery. During that time, I've been unable to see anything clearly beyond about a 4-inch focus distance. Robin throngs busily investigating the yard remained indiscernible. Even individuals on the ground directly below a window were unrecognizable as living creatures—merely moving blobs which might have been birds, squirrels, or wind-blown leaves.

Thankfully, that obligatory ordeal is over. I'll have my surgeries in February. And today, I can again see clearly…though I simply don't have sufficient words to tell you what a lovely and joyful blessing the sight of all these jaunty robins are to my weary, beauty-starved eyes.  

ROBIN UP!

The sun has just made it over the hill up the road from the cottage. Yellow-gold light is now varnishing the high tops of the tall sycamores on the island. There's not a cloud in the sky and the weatherman says we'll reach 77˚F this afternoon!

What a glorious day!

I've been up since 4:45, took Moon-the-Dog out, made coffee for me, tea for Mylady, fixed our breakfast, and by 6:00 a.m. was here, at my desk, plugging away at the first draft of a column. It was still dark beyond the window, but even so, the robins were beginning to stir. Every so often one would cut loose with a few swinging bars of their distinctive morning song—and while night lost its hold and black turned to gray as the burgeoning dawn found it way, the song of the robins became louder, bolder, longer, the building light being magically translated and poured out in their reflected joy.

I love robins, love their straightforward, joyous song. They sing with such unbridled enthusiasm! As if their hearts have simply swollen and finally bubbled over with pure melody—too glorious to be held back and contained until dawn. And so they sing their good news into the darkness, a boisterous proclamation of vernal triumph. A singing robin is truly spring personified, lyrical proof-positive of the season's arrival.

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REASSURING ROBIN

I wish I looked and felt as bright-eyed and cheerful as this robin I found practically at my feet this morning. I'd stepped out onto the deck to check on the river and allow Moon-the-dog to make her usual investigation of the cedars over by the board fence, when the bird flew down from a nearby box elder and landed no more than three feet away. After giving me a moment's close scrutiny—Does he look the sort who'd relish robins-on-toast for breakfast?—the bird apparently decided I passed inspection…and in the usual robin fashion, tilted and dashed forward even closer, stopping about a foot from the rock upon which I stood. 

I switched on the autofocus, held the camera at knee-level, and pushed the shutter. The friendly robin didn't flinch.

Robins are the personification of spring, a harbinger of the season itself. Their sudden en masse arrival on local lawns in late-February or early-March is newsworthy—a message of hope and changing times to be related to neighbors you meet at the mailbox, the cashier at the corner market, or the old gent down at feed-and-seed store. And such info will doubtless become the morning's premiere conversation topic among the breakfast bunch down at the local café. 

Even non-birder types incapable of naming a half-dozen common backyard species can usually manage to recognize a robin. They know what the robin's annual return implies, too—though you, being privy to such secrets, know that for many robins, their overwintering destination was often no farther away than the nearest woodland thicket. No matter—the facts and folklore don't have to match. Besides, you're as glad as they are to see robins on the lawn again…even if they've been hiding quite nearby these past months.

As winter turns to spring, robins sing in the season. How many mornings in March and April have I stood in the pre-dawn darkness and listened to a robin belting out his ebullient melody from some nearby treetop? It may not be the most complicated tune in the bird world, but it's catchy and swinging, filled with the bright green joy of spring, and the robin sings loud and clear with the lusty verve of his lark heritage. 

These past few days have been cold and often cloudy. Nothing out of the ordinary; just spring doing its usual seasonal two-step. But I've had enough. I'm weary of gray skies and heavy jackets. The grass is green…but not much else. I want to look through the woods on the islands and see that fine green "mist" among the skeletal limbs and intertwined branches that tells me things are beginning to leaf out. I want to amble a forest hillside and search for wildflowers. I'd like to plant a few bulbs in the garden. Or sit on the bench beside the river and warm my bones in the sun. My back and knee still ache. 

I want to stand by the cottage pool, cast my fly, and again feel the sudden electric weight of a smallmouth bass on the end of my line.

Yes…I know—all this will come in time. Maybe that's why this morning's robin came so near…to reassure me that all I have to do is wait.

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