Thrashers and Life

I just watched a documentary that set my mind spinning.  It's called "Life in a Day". People were encouraged to video life on 7/24/2010 and submit their videos.  The vignettes were then edited down to a 1 1/2 hour movie.  As expected, there is a wide variety of life styles from all parts of the world.  And yet there is a similarity: sleep, awaken, wash sleep from the eyes, eat , start the day.  There are celebrations, smiles, tears, hardships, faith, love and poverty.  All sorts of homes. Bicycles, cars, trains, planes and feet.  Lots and lots of feet.

All of the people were ordinary, and yet extraordinary.  No celebrities.  We see too much of them already. People living through what I think of as difficult circumstances, smiling and accepting of life, seeing the good in the world around them.  Beautiful people, even with dirt and grime in their pores.  All sorts of children, old people, a Korean man bicycling the world, eyes that peer into your soul, and African women pounding out a threshing rhythm that wove through many pictures.

What really kept with me was the very last scene. A young American woman upset that she had had to work all day, with no time to video.  It was close to midnight as she sat in her car.  She called herself ordinary and thought about the fact that "nothing had happened today worth telling".  Yet she was a beautiful young woman, and oblivious to the barooming thunder and the flicker of lightning going on around her.  She called it a nothing day and yet Nature was celebrating around her.  We must remember that Life is not just us.  It is the world around us and the people all over.

And with that thought I switch gears slightly to my own little slice of the world.  A few days ago, after a string of overcast, cool and gloomy days, we had a short period of sunshine and warmth.  During the gloomy days the birds around me were finches and hummingbirds, fighting over feeder space and ownership.  A lone Verdin scolded anything/one that moved (particularly our cat), dashing in to catch a drip of sugar water before it fell to the herb pots below.  Sunshine however, brought out joy in others that I don't normally hear.  As I settled into my chair with my book, ready for the sunshine to warm my joints and the book my mind, a burst of song came trilling from the mesquite in the corner. Liquid, sweet notes tripped over one another, not quite a melody but definitely not an identifiable string of notes.  Already guessing, I grabbed my ever present binocs and yes...there he was.  A Curve-billed Thrasher was telling the neighborhood of his pleasure in the moment.  He of the first light "Witty-witts" was letting loose with his seldom heard song.  A treat.  There is a similarity to the mockingbird's short, repeated phrases and yet no mockingbird sings with such purity, sweetness and melody.  Curve-bills are in my top ten favorite bird songs along with Dippers, Canyon Wrens, owls hooting at night, and the completely non-melodious ranting of hummingbirds.

Although we people are very wrapped up in our individual worlds , there is another beautiful world around us, that can offer great joy if we only open our eyes, ears and minds.  And with that thought, I vow to get out birding WAY more than I have been lately.