Look up

Look up every now and then.

I just looked up from a colorful article about Ed Ruscha's new exhibit. I had read several sections of the Times over breakfast and several more over lunch. I thought I was keeping an eye out for movement, because I am waiting for one cat to come back to the house after a morning outside, but to my surprise when I looked out the window, there was the female oriole and a dozen goldfinches, along with a little sparrow, all eating seeds and suet enthusiastically in close proximity on the bird feeders. While I was looking down, the landscape had filled up with color and movement.

At the same time, a hummingbird flew near the window to drink nectar from the orange justicia bush. She sat on a branch and looked in the window at me for a few seconds. I'm wearing a t shirt with flowers on it. She decided that I'm not a nectar source and went back to the justicia. Did she somehow know I had just made fresh nectar for the hummingbird feeders?

Listen for more than a few seconds at a time.

A few years ago in Costa Rica, our local guide, a vanilla farmer, asked us to tell him how many different sounds we heard. We stood and listened for almost five minutes. For most people, that's a long time to listen to ambient noise without speaking.

A flock of robins has been with us for the day. First they were in the yard to the north, then in the afternoon they moved over to the yard south of us. They talk and move around continually, on the ground and in the trees. The hummingbirds commented when I took in the feeders and brought them back out, cleaned and refilled. Every other songbird has been broadcasting at full volume since before dawn. Yesterday, late in the afternoon, as we were sitting on the back porch, a hawk stooped at the bird feeder. He went away empty clawed that time.

I recall our friend Mae said once when we were kayaking at North Key that she was storing up vistas for the coming week. Today I am storing up sights and sounds.