Suddenly a blackbird flew to the top of a beech. She perched way up on the tompost twig that stuck up thin against the sky and sat there watching how, far away over the trees, the night-weary pale-gray heavens were glowing in the distant east and coming to life. Then she commenced to sing.

Her little black body seemed only a tiny dark speck at that distance. She looked like a dead leaf. But she poured out her song in a great flood of rejoicing through the whole forest. And everything began to stir. The finches warbled, the little red-throat and the gold finch were heard. The doves rushed from place to place with a loud clapping and rustling of wings. The pheasants cackled as though their throats would burst. The noise of their wings, as they flew from their roosts to the ground, was soft but powerful. They kept uttering their metallic, splintering call with its soft ensuing chuckle. Far above the falcons cried sharply and joyously, “Yayaya!”

The sun rose.
~Felix Salten from Bambi

 

I had not actually been aware of the silence of the winter sunrise until the birds returned this week and the stillness retreated.   Last autumn their joyous morning songs had gradually ebbed as darkness expanded,  the heavy frosts driving them south to more hospitable climates.  Once in a while, if I listened carefully, there would be geese and trumpeters flying overhead with audible wing rushes and an occasional honk, though invisible in the fog and morning clouds.

Otherwise the eastern winter horizon would be lit to glowing each morning in stillness, without announcement or heralding song.  As if no one was there to notice.

The sunrises have a soundtrack again, just a few lines to introduce the symphony of spring around the corner.   In a short few weeks it will be all out booming chorus and I’ll be wishing for bird mufflers at 4:15 AM.

And so joy returns in the morning and I’m noticing.