Robin Song

Lately i’ve been working early mornings in our studio. i’m not really a morning person but always kind of wanted to be. i was painting some large canvases and doing a repetitive technique involving dot patterns. This put me into sort of a trance and might have made me notice a bird singing loudly nearby. It sounded pretty to me and different than most of the sparrow’s chirping i’ve been used to. It was deeper and had more emotion to it. i wondered if it could be a robin. i had never identified the sound of a robin’s song in the city because there are so many noises you usually can’t single it out. i stepped outside and sure enough i clearly saw a robin in our neighbor’s crepe myrtle tree, singing. It saw me and immediately stopped singing. I think they are shy around people and that’s part of why we don’t hear their songs. i went back inside to continue painting. About ten minutes later i heard some sharp chirps, then a weird laughter-sounding call, before the robin went back into it’s song.

i was touched by how shy this bird was that it only sung in the early hours of the morning. i felt a connection to the animal, being up before dawn working on my own art.

Days later, i guess the bird had become more familiar with me and it continued it’s song even when i noisily took out the trash right under the crepe myrtle. It’s been a week though and now the novelty of this bird has faded and it’s really getting on my nerves.