Hey tweets, for those of you who just want to *find the bird,* an EASTERN
KINGBIRD was flying and perching around the Youth Garden today at the Fill.

Seeing that bird made me think of the following:

I recently returned from a trip to Marine Corps headquarters in Quantico,
Virginia. The Marines were honoring those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan by
dedicating one of their weekly parades to them. Prior to the parade, there
was a reception in a big tent pitched near the commandant's house. As I
wandered around in the tent, trying to find something nonalcoholic to drink
(no luck - the innocuous-looking red punch dispensed by spigot into my tall
water glass turned out to be heavily laced with rum, as I discovered after a
big gulp), I came upon a poster mounted on an easel. It said, "We are at
war. Are you doing all you can?"

I've been thinking about that question ever since. Whether I agree with the
war or not, our young men and women are overseas fighting it. Am I doing all
I can to help them?

Or to put it a more direct way, is there anything that I - an aging woman
with little money and bad knees - can do to help?

Well, sure, there is plenty that I can do. More than anything, I can foster
kindness. It may sound loopy, but I have come to believe that if each one of
us grows strong enough and big-hearted enough to show kindness and
generosity to others, then eventually there will be no more war. Kindness
leads to understanding, understanding to respect, and respect to tolerance.
You can't fight someone whom you understand and respect.

So lately I've tried my best to always be kind.

My beliefs were put to a severe test today. I was creeping quietly over the
wooden bridge at the Fill, sneaking up on the Virginia rail that is supposed
to love to parade up and down the road there, when a loud voice blew my hair
straight out and made me leap so high that I might have approached the
record for the standing broad jump. "What are you seeing?" bellowed a woman
who had popped out of nowhere. "I'm a birder too!!"

My first impulse was to raise both hands in the air and run around in
circles while ululating the loudest primal scream ever. My hands twitched
upwards, but then I remembered that I'm supposed to be fostering kindness.
Swallowing the scream that was burbling upwards like Mount Etna about to let
go, I calmly answered, "There's a mother wood duck with nine babies in the
slough." The woman's face lit up. "Oh," she said, "I was here once when the
baby barn swallows had just fledged, and they were perched in a row on the
railing. They were so cute." She went on to tell me that her daughter was
playing a volleyball match, and she was on her way to watch. I wished her
well, and we parted.

I can't say my frame of mind was happy. I mean, I had lost any chance of
seeing that pesky Virginia rail. I didn't care about baby barn swallows
perching on a railing in somebody else's past lifetime. On the other hand, I
had kept my resolution to be kind. There's got to be a reward in that,
doesn't there?

There was. Or maybe it's just the Fill being the Fill. Not 15 minutes later,
a black and white streak flashed across the path and materialized on the
greenhouse frame at the Youth Garden: it was an Eastern Kingbird, flown in
from who knows where and who knows why. But there it was, black shoe-button
eyes gleaming in the sun, white-banded tail flipping gently up and down
occasionally. The bird posed for some ten minutes, or maybe it was an hour -
I was lost in a universe of wonder where time loses all meaning. Einstein
said that as we approach the speed of light, time slows down. I don't know
any physics, but I do know that as the light shines on a rarely beautiful
bird like this one, time does stop. How I wish that everyone in the world
could have shared that one moment with me. No war. Just the peace that
dwells in our hearts when joy fills us up.

Here's everything I saw today at the Fill:



pied-billed grebe
great blue heron
Canada goose
WOOD DUCK (with nine chicks)
mallard
gadwall
northern shoveler
cinnamon teal
bald eagle
ring-necked pheasant
killdeer
glaucous-winged gull
CASPIAN TERN (two fishing over the lake)
Vaux's swift
Anna's hummingbird
belted kingfisher
northern flicker
WESTERN WOOD-PEWEE (calling and hawking bugs from atop the willows along the
trail to the point)
EASTERN KINGBIRD
American crow
tree swallow
violet-green swallow
barn swallow
cliff swallow
bushtit
black-capped chickadee
Bewick's wren
American robin
European starling
cedar waxwing
song sparrow
savannah sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
red-winged blackbird
brown-headed cowbird
house finch
American goldfinch
house sparrow