It was 5:22 AM when I looked at the clock. Though it was now light the sun was not yet visible.
I had been awake for quite a while listening to a bird singing a lone note from a nearby tree. A second bird joined the first; this is when I noticed the clock that it was 5:22AM. It seems I had been listening to the first bird sing for at least an hour. It was dark when I heard the first bird. His tone is singular, not more than a mellow screech. It is not an unpleasant sound, though I suppose it might be if you were trying to go back to sleep, or attempting to do quiet meditation. I was doing neither. I was present to listen to early morning birdsong.
This is the first night that I did not close our bedroom window. The weather is finally changing to warm spring days, but the night air can still be cold. I felt to leave the window open before I went to bed, and I was happy when I woke and saw that my wife chose not close the window when she later came to bed.
Who were the birds that greeted me before sunrise? I am guessing that the first bird was a crow. Perhaps not for I really do not know. His sound was not a “caw” or even similar. I would say that it was more along the lines of a screech, though not the sound of alarm or of pain. When I heard the second bird I immediately thought it might be a dove, or as we call them here in Arizona, a mourning dove. But again, I am not certain of this. I am thinking it was a dove of some kind because her song was a pleasant “cooing.”
What kind of song did the birds sing? Whereas the first bird sang only one note, the second sang using five notes.
The number of birds changed. There were only two birds that I could hear; maybe there were more but I only heard two. But after about 10 minutes I heard two more, the third and fourth the same as the second, only further away. After about 20 minutes I no longer heard the first. Evidently his work was done, and now the birdsong before sunrise was carried on by others.
I cannot imagine caging these birds that greeted me before sunrise. But that is a story I may save to tell another day.
– Joseph