Trees and Birds are Antidotes to the Pandemic

Yes: No doubt confinement can lead to a renewal in our relationship with nature. Covid-19 has brought the world to its knee, true, but bright people are working night and day to unlock the killer’s secret, to strip it of its corona, to defang and defeat it.

In the meantime, what do we do? Social distancing is the norm but we can go out to bask in the spring sunshine alone or in pairs, walk the edge of wilderness to, as Thoreau put it, revive ourselves with “the tonic of wildness … at the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

Suddenly we are rediscovering our primal origin simply by putting one foot in front of the other and … walking. And seeing. And observing. And wondering how we could have overlooked the wonders just beyond our doorsteps!

Well, there’s an obvious answer: For far too long we have been living by keeping our nose on the grindstone, day in and day out. Even the change of seasons did not register on our senses. Work, work, work, money, money, money. Muddle through life with blinders on.

The coronavirus pandemic has enforced isolation but it has also taken down the barrier we erected between ourselves and nature. Whether absorbing sunlight in car-free roads and pathways or simply sitting and letting nature’s pageantry pass by in slow time, we are discovering that, as Shakespeare put it, “One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin."

With the shelter-in-place, I go out walking twice daily. There are plenty of quiet trails, empty roads and acres of rolling greens near where I live. Golfers used to dominate this pastoral slice of the earth, but their swings have fallen silent and now walkers have taken over.

Lyrical Oak - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

For the first time in years, I find myself soaking in plentiful sunshine filtered by oaks, maples, willows and eucalyptuses. I lie in their seductive shadows, looking up at the clouds moving ever so slowly and the lyrical limbs of the trees creating a forest of myth and songs. By and by I become aware of the grass I am lying on and the earth beneath it. I feel my veins and nerves growing into the ground and communicating with the roots beneath me. I am woven into the roots and the leaves. I am one with the universe.

Eventually I get up and enter the realm of birds.

Robin in action - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

A robin – rotund, well-fed - lands in front of me. It begins pecking at the earth with purpose and lo and behold! a worm is wriggling in its bill. One gulp and the worm is history! I observe it from a respectful distance. Soon I realize that it has not wasted a single peck at the earth: Every time it probes, it brings out a worm. It’s as if it knows exactly where the insect is crawling underneath the ground, invisible to the human eye. How does the robin know its location with such precision, correct 100% of the time! Apparently, as I learned later from the Internet, it is mostly through its exceptional vision. A robin can see small changes in soil and grass as worms move just below the surface and locate it with pin-point precision. It also relies on its acute hearing. As worms move about, they disrupt the soil, causing small particles of dirt to rub together. While it is too faint for humans to hear, it is audible to migratory songbirds like robins. I kept thinking: If we could somehow harness the collective intelligence of the robins, we could banish or destroy this deadly coronavirus for good.

Phoebe - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

What symbol of freedom birds are! There are the phoebes snapping insects right out of the air. Sparrows and finches flit about with no cars and humans to disrupt their carefree flights. I catch a finch feeding its baby. An oak titmouse tilts its head, surrounded by dense clusters of pink trumpet flowers.

Finches feeding - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Oak Titmouse - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Suddenly my eye is drawn to a splash of bright red pecking away at the bark of a pine: an acorn woodpecker! It angles its bill precariously to probe a cavity in the pine, no doubt devouring whatever is crawling inside. It then rights itself and starts climbing up the tree in short bursts, circling around the trunk with a balance and an agility beyond world-class gymnasts. And then suddenly it’s a blur as it flies away.

Acorn woodpecker - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

And what about the pied-billed greb coolly appraising the strange humans at the edge of the pond gawking at it? Or the ducklings getting their first swimming lessons (alright, maybe the fourth or the fifth) from their parents?

Pied-billed Greb - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Ducklings get swimming lessons - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

For the Anna’s hummingbird nesting in the trees around my house, I only have to open my front door and there it is, sipping nectar from the pink flowers in the hedge directly across. Occasionally I see a pair and hear their high-pitched calls. These tiny fearless restless bundles of energy with metabolism that can put any human to shame are heavy drinkers, so I make sure my feeder is always brimming with nectar.

Anna's Hummingbird - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Northern flicker - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

On another day during my morning walk a bird alights in front of me literally out of the blue. I cannot believe the exotic nature of this bird, speckled with black dots on a pinkish body, with a dark, almost heart-shaped image on its chest, or is it a map of the United States, as if a graphics designer had imprinted it there. Before I could savor its beauty to my heart’s content, it flew away, but I was grateful for those few moments of wonder. I looked it up and learned that I had seen a northern flicker.

Thereafter, I began to see Northern flickers more and more. It’s like those words we sometimes look up in the dictionary and then we begin to see the words more frequently in everything we read. Flickers have long, sharp bills that allow them to dig deep into the earth for their meals.

Goslings - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Another day, I saw the last rays of the sun lighting up the fur finery of goslings, watched over by their serene mother. The goslings were gallantly trying to walk, stumbling, falling, regaining balance and moving on. We use the word ‘cute’ far too often and have diminished its meaning but if the word were to describe just one type of living being on earth, it has to be goslings.

Bluebird - (c) by Hasan Z Rahim

But the bird that takes my breath away is the blue bird, part sky, part sunrise and sunset, and all beauty. The blue of the male is so pure it glistens. The females are not as showy, while fledglings are grayish with spots on them. Two pairs of bluebirds that nest in maples, oaks and beech are just a few yards from my doorstep. Sometimes I see a bluebird on a pink trumpet tree, the flowers in gorgeous contrast to its blue. Sometimes I see one with a worm dangling from its bill. These birds are alone worth losing oneself in the outdoors, particularly during this enforced isolation.

Bluebirds - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

“All of humanity’s problems,” wrote Pascal, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Well, I have a perfect excuse for feeling restless sitting in a room. At a certain hour of the day, when the sun hasn’t crossed the meridian yet and a light breeze is blowing, the bluebird beauties beckon, and I no longer sit quietly in a room alone.