Walk with the Mockingbirds

(Published as a KQED Perspective 4/10/08)

My exercise is walking and I do it every morning – even when I don’t have time - like today. The San Francisco Presidio National Park is literally next door - so I have no excuses and it is a particularly glorious April day. To mark it in the calendar of nature, the purple Wisteria are, in other parts of the city, giving it their all for their annual cabaret extravaganza but here in the Park I have come upon a mockingbird in full throttle.

I stop and listen.

Mockingbirds mimic the sounds they take a fancy too. This guy is strutting and singing to find his femme of the season. I detect in his song - a raven’s squawk, a red tailed hawk’s cry and perhaps even a wild parrot.

Listening for his location, takes time. My eyes search high in the pines. Not there. Scanning lower, he in not in the Monterey Cypress, either. I focus harder and listen closer and this time, I find him in an understory tree almost in front of me on the trail.

We look at each other.

I am a bit stunned to be so close, but he continues singing – it was like he was singing to me. Sitting on a Eucalyptus stump, I give him my full attention.



Then I heard it. I heard - laterally - all the other mocking birds in the forest. All staked out in separate territories, singing for their sweethearts to come.

Suddenly the breeze was sweet and heavy and cool like spring buds.

Next week, I will not remember my everpresent to do list but I will always remember the moment, when I sat on eucalyptus stump in the Presidio, the air was full of spring, and song and I was outrageously happy and alive.