Birdwatching

I call this work. To sit under the trees - not in the chair I usually sit in, because it is occupied - and look at the tiny bird, sitting on the back of my usual chair, almost a perfect ball with its fluffed up feathers. The deep black when he opens his beak to sing, the bright orange or red - in my mothertongue he is called the redbreasted one, roodborstje -, the movement of the head when he stops his singing and listens attentively to the other birds. His song is beautiful. It makes me think of spring, even when I can smell the autumn in the air. A birdsong is a beginning.
He sings for ten minutes maybe. He looks at me. Robins are curious creatures. They come up to you when you work in the garden, drink your coffee, paint the windowsills of your forest house in a pale sky-blue. I hardly ever see them in the city but I hear them at night, when I am still behind my computer after 4. Just after the hour of the wolf. They are the first birds to welcome the day, even before there is daylight. They are calling it in. And then when it is there, they celebrate it in their song.