For the Birds

I was out for an eight-mile run this morning (who am I?!), and I had a pre-planned pause about five miles into the run to refill my water bottle along the way. There's a drinking fountain along the golf course, and it happens to be near a large fishing pond.

Our neighborhood and surrounding area happens to be quite popular with a large variety of avian friends, from the adorable little finches that crowd Dad's backyard feeders, to doves, to Canadian geese, to hawks (and yes, we have had hawks catch smaller birds in our yard and the mess is...unsettling. C'est la vie). So it came as no surprise to me this morning to find that the fishing pond was being visited by a very large group of Canadian geese...though I was quite charmed to see one couple waddling along with their four goslings.

I watched them as I walked slowly back towards the road to continue my run, but before I got very far, two small birds fluttered past me and settled on a nearby bush. I crept closer, and they paid me no mind, as one sat there with some sort of berry in its mouth and the other sat next to it, beak wide open, squawking as though to say, "Come on!! Share!!"

So the bird with the berry shared, and the geese kept waddling, and I stopped, charmed by it all and thinking how lucky I am that I live in such a beautiful place, and that, while it's important to keep running, I can also recognize when it's important to just stop and appreciate the world around me.