Cormorant

Cormorant: 

there has been a cormorant visiting my neighborhood pond, with many sightings over the past week and my hope that it will make a home here for coming months until it's time to migrate south again. It's a new bird for me and I can't recall any other point its been mentioned locally. But here it is, at home for however long it might choose to stay. 

we first spotted the cormorant thinking it might be the green heron, which is another new visitor to the pond. It was some distance away on a spot of land towards the middle of the pond, hard to make out other than an oddness to its neck and head that made it standout from a suspected duck or possible goose. It was a photo and a bird app that helped identify the new visitor. We see it most everyday now, the gift of a most unusual looking bird, almost prehistoric in appearance, perfect in design for diving deep in their hunt for fish, navigating across the water, as well as migrating seasonally over great distance. 

these are quite intelligent birds as well, using tools for hunting, dropping insects or small rocks on the water's surface to attract fish looking for a meal. One of the few tool using birds, with crows and ravens being just as clever. Cormorants will stand on rocks or small patches of land amidst the water, wings spread to dry in the sun, majestic, completely at home in their surroundings. 

a new favorite bird to capture my attention. 

every sighting is a gift, rare birds such as the cormorant, as well as the local geese and ducks that make this pond their home year round now. Or mostly so, as it seems that some will migrate further north over the course of summer, and that they will sometimes fly a bit south if conditions warrant. But there's always a large variety of birds here, none are common to my sight, each one magical in their appearance. For me, the importance is to bring new eyes to every walk, my innocence reborn with each sighting of a robin, or blue jay, the exclamation of a cardinal against the witness of snow, and how my body responds to the call of a hawk circling far above. 

the thing is, this is my landscape, a reflection of my truest self, the intimacy of deep kinship. The cormorant reflects my uniqueness, my own efficiency of design, and how my purpose is ingerent through the vibrancy and grace of simply being alive. 

my landscape is life. 

and every walk reveals this. 

~

Peace, Eric