Again this morning we had a big wind, the kind that reminds me of the wolf huffing and puffing to blow the house down. Remember him in the story of The Little Three Pigs? Well, this was that kind of wind. It came swooping up the valley in huge gusts, making groaning noises as it swirled around the house, rattling the windows.
The small birds that usually come to my feeders were hiding out somewhere. The wind was too big for them to even sit on the tree branches outside my window. I wondered where they went, maybe down into the lower part of the valley, or maybe they flew out of the valley to a place where they could find shelter from the wind.
Then two mockingbirds blew in, literally, and landed on the tree on the side of the small hill outside my office balcony. I could see they were having trouble even staying on the branches, but one of them kept trying to fly into the wind. He would leap up, but before he could even flap his wings, the wind caught him and pushed him back and up higher. Then he would pull in his wings and dive back to his starting point.
The other mockingbird and I watched him try this again, and again, this heroic fight against a much stronger force, only to be blown back every time. He stopped for a while, to catch his breath I imagined, and just then the wind stopped too, for a moment. He seized the opportunity and took off into the canyon, the other bird right behind him, following his flight plan.
I smiled as they flew off, thinking about the Wright brothers and how many times they had to try before they were able to take off. It amused me to think that even birds have their days when it might be easier to just give up.
