Every day a gift
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T.S. ELIOT
It’s been quiet. Too quiet? “Nothing here,” I mumble. Nothing that is, except several Black-crowned Night-Herons dozing in the birch woods flanking the pond. The herons haven’t moved since I arrived. Not known to be loquacious, they utter a laconic qwok when disturbed and in the gathering dusk, when they vacate their day roost to fly with measured wing beats to their evening foraging grounds. In spring and summer, they are the signature avian species at Big John’s Pond. Their laid-back, languid nature is my standing invitation to tune into the rhythms of the pond and shed the impatience I have brought with me.
I’m joined by a young couple arriving at the blind, each sporting a pair of shiny black binoculars. They talk in whispers, as if expecting something to happen. After an appropriate interval, I decide to point out the night-herons. “Oh … yes, now we see them,” one says. ‘That’s what they’re called? We didn’t know. We’re ‘newbies,’ just getting into birding.”
We are totally unprepared for what happens next: A raucous rattle shatters the silence. A kingfisher appears, apparently out of nowhere — her call strident, her raised crest bristling. And now, suddenly, inexplicably, the bird bolts toward us, streaking straight for the blind. Then, in an instant,
