03.23.15  Of all the signs of Spring, the lowly common robin is my favorite.  They are everywhere now, sunning themselves at the top of trees, hopping around in search of worms.  I’ve always called them “night birds”.  While they are the first ones to awaken in the mornings–except for the honking of the nesting geese just south of us–and their various lilting calls are familiar signs of early Spring, the robin’s song at night is a different melody entirely.  BirdNotes describes it as “ethereal whispered notes to its carol, creating a song of remarkable grace and complexity.”  They will sing for hours from sunset to darkness.  And, with the long spell between sunset and last light here in the north country, I am often fast asleep in summer before they finish their “ethereal whispered notes”, out there in the darkening forest, singing the fairies, in their fairy houses, to sleep.

“When you were a bird, you knew the fairies pretty well, and you remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which is a great pity you can’t write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard of children who declared that they had never once seen a fairy.” –J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird.