“Close both eyes to see with the other eye.”
—Rumi 

The anniversary birthday of my sister’s partner Nathaniel, an avid birder who died in an accident six and half years ago, occurred a few weeks ago in early January.
In celebration of Nathaniel’s memory and his joy in birding and in life, friends and family take this time to go bird watching and send emails to us all naming and counting the birds they see.

I have not participated before because of my limited eyesight, I am legally blind and mostly see a shadowy blur (if anything) when trying to spot birds. But I grew up with the names of birds, the colors of birds, and the calls of birds around us being identified enthusiastically and constantly by my ornithologist father.
So this year, when a wise friend suggested we try going to a nearby nature center which has a glass-walled room looking out on several bird feeders in a wood, I was delighted to try a creative way of joining the celebration and seeing more of the birds than I usually do.

As we sat gazing out at the trees and the leafy ground, the first animal my friend and I saw was a fat squirrel who parked himself under the feeder trees and gathered seeds from the ground the entire afternoon.

Then, once we were sitting quietly, the birds started coming, black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, and slate-colored juncos, all zooming in to peck seeds from the feeders and then away again.
A gang of purple finches swarmed and took over the feeder for awhile, keeping other birds off till they were done, except for a persistent downy woodpecker who ignored them but kept peeking at us around the feeder and trunks of trees. A fast fiery cardinal flashed to the ground beside the window beside us for a full moment as I stared at him. It was my first time seeing one, what a vibrant set of colors to wear all the time!
Little Carolina wrens and white-throated sparrows darted and pecked along the ground next to a pair of waddling mourning doves. At the end of the afternoon a red-bellied woodpecker arrived, whose head was actually red not his belly, one of those funny naming anomalies in the bird world. I started recognizing the colors and behaviors that signal specific species and began to identify birds as they returned to feed.
It was strange and wonderful for me to understand finally the draw of an activity that I’ve had described to me my entire life and never understood well. I have seen birds before mostly in abbreviated flashes of color, but that afternoon I was with them, immersed in the way they danced with the world around them.

The afternoon felt like a reaffirmation of Nathaniel’s life. The aliveness of the birds reminded me of the way he inspired and brought together the people around him. Because of this, emails from friends and family from all over the world, watching and counting birds were especially meaningful to me this year.

I am grateful to Nathaniel for giving me a belated insight into my father’s love of watching birds, like a reverse birthday gift!

I am also very grateful for the eyesight I do have which allows me to see and appreciate this fragile and beautiful world.

So I encourage you to pause a moment, and let yourself open to what is happening around you now, taking the world in with each breath and all of your senses. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do!