The Gift Of Being Chosen

Bathtime with Kinglets in the garden.

Sometimes a gift that makes perfect sense doesn’t seem so much like a boon. And a gift that makes no sense, no direct, immediate, logical sense, can feel ever so much more like magic. Yesterday afternoon was like that.

I was in the garden, feeling the sun on my face and listening to all the chattery songbirds who are flittering about through the garden these days, snacking on floral seedheads and dried-on-the-vine berries, scratching through the fallen leaves looking for worms and bugs…

I was standing maybe three and a half feet from the birdbath and maybe twenty five feet from the potting bench when a lively little troupe of Golden-crowned Kinglets appeared on short wings, carrying their energetic conversation in with them. One immediately flew to an eight inch clay saucer on the potting bench, full to the rim with rainwater and an orange-yellow discord of fallen, Japanese maple leaves, landing rather unceremoniously in its midst and immediately began dipping and splashing while the others watched from the drooping branches of a weeping juniper, nearby.

Camera-less, without even my phone in my pocket, I got the sense that I was witnessing the beginning of a little bath party that might go on for a bit, so moments after a Black-capped Chickadee flitted into the scene, taking up a supervisory position on a bobbing olive branch behind the birdbath, I edged slowly away and toward the back door of the house, hoping to retrieve my camera and rejoin this joyous little group without breaking the magic of the moment. It doesn’t always go that way.

Soft words and encouragements; I talked to them as I re-approached and all of them seemed well enough at ease.

When I had regained my former position near the birdbath, which allowed me an unobstructed view of their chosen and more sheltered, clay saucer bath back in the potting area, one of the four in the tree popped down off a branch and began splashing and shimmying, and dip-dip-dipping once again. I was delighted, of course and judiciously snapped a half-dozen frames of this bath time melee before another little, mohawked warrior fluttered down almost beside me, alighting in the larger, red birdbath within arm’s reach to began his own bath.

Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa)

He was almost too close for my long lens to be able to focus so I took one, short, slow, unobtrusive step sideways while he continued to splash and flutter with abandon, then did my best to cheerlead respectfully while holding a camera up near my face. He splashed his way my direction like a joyous kid in a bathtub, working his way to the nearest edge of the chilled ceramic pool and looked at me with playful seeming eyes absent even a hint of fear. This near proximity felt like such a vote of trust, a gift.

After a minute or two of total body gyrations in cold, clear water, my brave little friend hopped up onto the dish’s rim, shook and shimmied some more to redistribute his watery payload, turned momentarily to consider me, then settled into a long, meditative gaze that feels a bit like a surprise with busy little kinglets of any sort.

Moments passed… and then, without alarm he spread his still-damp wings and lifted off, flying to a sheltered branch five or six feet away, where he then began to preen and chatter with his companions once again. A perfect moment to take my leave, to honor the trust this little feather-poem had placed in me by choosing to be vulnerable, so close. Better to slip away before having overstayed my welcome, a practice I’ve learned over time works amazingly well with people, too.

May you be paying attention today when magic, however small and insignificant-seeming flits into your peripheral field of view and nods, hinting about and commenting without words upon that, kind, trustworthy cloud of energy you have surrounded yourself with. They see it. they feel it. And sometimes they mirror it.

Trust that.

Preening and chattering with friends after the bath...

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