This morning I tested positive for covid for the first time. I felt pretty rough with cough, congestion and other symptoms, so it wasn\u2019t a surprise. The weather was darkly gray, cold, damp and felt miserable in every way. But in the middle of this dismal day there came one charmed and happy moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through an open window in the kitchen as I stood at the sink, I heard a soft, familiar chup<\/em> among the other calls of birds nearby. And sure enough, after finding my binoculars and just a few moments of searching, I found a Hermit Thrush sitting on a low branch of an oak on the edge of the back yard. A gentle, pale-brown bird with dark spots on its throat and chest and a reddish tail that it lifted up and lowered slowly. It held its head erect, with the bill pointed slightly up, and it seemed to be looking back at me with a round, watchful eye, as I looked at it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s a bird I don\u2019t see very often, though I know one has spent this winter so far in the shrubs around our house, coming out to forage in the mulch with sparrows and cardinals and towhees. A quiet, unobtrusive songbird, it has long been one of my favorites, so today it felt comforting to have this brief, sweet connection.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning I tested positive for covid for the first time. I felt pretty rough with cough, congestion and other symptoms, so it wasn\u2019t a surprise. The weather was darkly gray, cold, damp and felt miserable in every way. But in the middle of this dismal day there came one charmed and happy moment. Through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2429,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions\/2429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}