Rockin’ Robin, tweet, tweet, tweet!

It started with my friend a couple weeks ago. We walk our dogs together weekend mornings, and he asked if I’d noticed all the birds singing to greet the dawn.

 I hadn’t. 

Then my wife said the same thing to me. She had heard the robins singing. It might be because her sewing room is at the front of the house, so she can hear the birds outside more easily. There is quite a bit of open space in our neighborhood, so we get a lot of robins on dewy spring mornings, out hunting worms, claiming territory, and singing for mates. I like robins’ cheerful songs, but I hadn’t noticed.

Later that morning I was in downtown Oakland approaching BART, and I heard a robin singing. I laughed at hearing one at Broadway and 12th, but not out amid the yards back in Alameda.

Rather than waiting for one of the trains that goes in to the Civic Center, I got on a Montgomery BART train (a commuter train that only goes in to two stops in the city before returning to the east bay). It means a longer walk to work, but I can use the exercise.

Departing at a stop I infrequently visit, I jogged up the stairs and out through the turnstiles into a busy, vibrant station (unlike Civic Center), with a flower stand, coffee shop, and approached a diminutive young busker playing a guitar with an amp. The kid looked really young and was playing with a lot of heart, really pouring joy into the song as I hustled by: “all the little birds on jay bird street, love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet, rockin’ robin, tweet, tweet tweet … ”

Had to laugh. I’m hearing robins in downtown Oakland and the Financial District, but not out in suburbia.

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Addendum:  this Saturday morning, at the end of our dog walk, I could hear the gorgeous, liquid song of a meadowlark, which always snaps me back to being a kid and hearing those delightful, cheerful songs, practically acrobatic on the notes.

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