Serendipity

What in blazes was that?

I am by no means an expert birder, but I am familiar with many of the common birds one encounters in the suburban Midwest. A glance through binoculars or the zoom lens of the camera is usually enough to determine the nature of a bird that I can't distinguish by eye alone (particularly since I refuse to wear glasses for seeing at a distance unless I am driving.

 But occasionally, excitingly, I will see a bird that I haven't seen before on the Greenway. A few weeks ago it was the Rusty Blackbird, looking like a Common Grackle from a distance but, through the lens, its pale eye, shorter tail and rusty wash proved that assumption wrong.

Orchard Oriole

Turning back towards home on a recent sojourn, heading north along the "spine" of the Greenway between the Sycamore Apartments and the part of the trail that jogs west towards the Birds in Flight sculpture, I stopped to photograph a dark bird in the branches of a small tree. It was smallish, and I assumed it was another of the "blackbirds" that frequent the Greenway, perhaps a cowbird.

 When I looked through the lens, however, I saw a fresh face, with a black head and dark rusty underside. Naturally, if flew off in the opposite direction and I turned tail to follow it, a mad gleam in my eye as an older couple out for their morning constitutional passed with a smile.

It was my lucky day, for the mystery bird stopped near enough for me to snap several more pictures before flying off farther than I was willing to follow. Its shape and coloring struck me as something I had certainly come across before in my handy guide, but the name didn't come easily to mind. 

I practically skipped the rest of the way home, grinning at the unexpected encounter (coming almost immediately after crossing paths with a  mama opossum and her babies). Back home, a quick glance through the bird book identified an Orchard Oriole, a regular inhabitant of open shrubby areas.

It doesn't have to be a rare bird. It doesn't have to be a new bird. Heck, it doesn't have to be a bird--an odd weed or bug will do. But these brief encounters are exhilarating just the same, small, serendipitous novelties that are unsought and unearned; moments of communion that remind me of how much is out there, if we just create the mental and physical space to allow it in.