When I moved to this property, seven years ago, I had room to put a nice big garden in. There were lots of deer and critters around here that like to eat gardens, so I put a fence up to deter them.
While I was planting my first garden here, I heard birds singing. I have always mimicked and whistled back what I hear to keep the birds “talking” to me. One bird would even come and light on a far post of the garden and “talk” to me. It made all kinds of different sounds and when it flew, it had a white circle under each wing and its tail. I had never noticed a bird like it before.
My mom is a bird watcher and has always named birds when we saw them together. So I asked her what this bird was and she didn’t know. I had looked in a bird book she had and the only bird that looked similar was a mockingbird, but the book didn’t say anything about white spots underneath. So I was still unsure of what it was until a friend was over and identified it for sure, as a mockingbird. That explained why it made so many different sounding songs and tweets.
That summer was fun because whenever I was outside in the garden, that bird always seemed to come around to “talk”. After the third year of this going on, as soon as I would step out from under the porch to work outside, that bird found me quickly. I even knew which couple of trees it was usually in and started looking for it, but it would start chattering excitedly as soon as it saw me.
The last two years, that bird would even find me when I would be in the big garage with the door open, working out there. It would come out and sit on the wood pile by that door and “talk”. Which was very brave because of the cats we have had. The very last time I saw it, was on that wood pile and I was in that big garage painting something with my husband.
The next day, it wasn’t anywhere and I never saw it again. I have seen several mockingbirds since, but none are “my” bird. It was a six year relationship with a creature that weighs only a few ounces, but when it disappeared, it left a tiny hole in my happiness. I never knew what happened, whether it had lived its full life, or a predator got it, but that little piece of nature left a warm and fuzzy place on my heart.