February Wings

This week the yard has been alive in a way winter rarely allows. With the snow crusted over the fields and the trees rimed in ice, the birds have arrived in waves: robins, starlings, crows. 

They fill the branches like a second, restless canopy. They land on the roof, shuffle across the gutters, and lift off again in a rush that sounds like someone shaking out a heavy quilt.

I do not recall ever seeing so many at once. It feels as if the cold has pushed them all into the same narrow band of open ground, the same few patches of berries, the same sheltered corners of the valley. 

According to ornithologists, what we are seeing is not true migration but winter movement, the kind that happens when snow and ice force birds to concentrate wherever food is still available. They are seeking what is thawed, what is edible, what is possible.

My grandmother used to say that the first robin meant spring was on its way. I have been thinking about that as I watch hundreds of them tilt and settle in the trees.

 

One robin is a promise. A whole flock feels like a reminder that even in the hardest stretch of winter, something is shifting. The season is gathering itself. The world is preparing to turn.

Spring has to be on the way, yes?

For now, the birds keep coming. They rise and fall, dark against the pale sky, like a winter tide. And even though the air still bites and the ground is still locked in ice, I cannot help but feel that familiar tug of hope, quiet but insistent, carried on their wings.