Under the Camphor Tree

Away from the noise and distraction, days in the Florida wilds far removed from city sights and sounds pass like a slow drip of honey from the comb. Most days, when the sun is a hand span above the horizon, a line of sight blocked by a thousand old oaks, I sit at the backyard table with coffee and toast, the dog at my feet. But while the horizon is hidden from my view, the first light of morning weaves its way through those trees and floods speckled and golden across the yard, a slow moving kaleidoscope of flickering sunlight. For a long hour the morning creeps lovingly across what seems an uninhabited world, the silence unbroken by birds or the hum of insects. The only things moving are light and breeze, gentle stimuli in the stirring of a new day.

The hour turns and countless small voices rise from trees and grass, the slow arrival of a soundtrack that would sound like armageddon if connected to big speakers. In short time a crowded community of life is moving about the trees, clicking, rasping and chittering in the grass, while in my ear the annoying buzz of a mosquito dodging my slaps and waving hands. Soon the ground around the bird feeder is busy with five or six redbirds, another one at the feeder tossing down sunflower seeds to mates below. I once had no admiration for the female redbird, seeing it as dull beside the dazzling male. Not so any more. The nearness of so many has shown that the darker female is the true beauty.

Yesterday I watched a large, black beetle with white spots rolling a ball of dung through the grass. I could see nearby where the beetle’s prize had come from and looked up at Farina nosing in the grass a ways off. I’ve read a little about dung beetles but had never seen one at work. How did the beetle manage to get his cargo so perfectly round?

I was busy scaring a pesky squirrel off the bird feeder, Red Ryder’s BBs whizzing past his furry butt and I noticed a small bird in a jasmine bush close by. Not bothered by my nearness, it searched for something and I could see its color patterns clearly. A small bird, smaller than a sparrow and with a gray back and wings, white breast and pale yellow at the throat. It also had a pale spot of yellow on its back. I tried looking it up online later but had no luck. Every description I typed in came up blank.

Blank. A good word to describe my understanding of the sights and sounds coloring the life out here among the frogs and leaping lizards. Little by little, day by day I untangle one more mystery.