Reading Thich Nhat Hanh, I learn that noticing my feet as they touch the ground can turn a walk into a miracle. As I practiced this in today’s late afternoon light, my awareness shifted from undone tasks to the joy of feeling the earth beneath my feet. And then suddenly there were warblers all around—the flame-throated blackburnian twirling among green buds, the black throated blues hopping in the forget-me-nots, the yellow flycatching over a pond, the yellow-rumped dancing along greening branches, and the black and white, flashing its long stripes as it climbed up the shaggy trunks of the oldest trees.

About a week ago, around May Day, I stood for a long time and watched a blue-headed vireo flycatch from a tree in the meadow below my path. Looking things up later in our oldest bird book, I found it used to be called the blue-headed greenlet, which somehow sounds just right. Between the greenlet and the warblers, I’ve been mesmerized by a hermit thrush, a ruby crowned kinglet, a flock of white-throated sparrows, and a treetop full of cedar waxwings.

Yet this spring’s first bird visitation happened in April, during a snowstorm in the Berkshires, when Michal and I were out walking in the woods. Our quiet meditation was interrupted when two birds came tumbling down a tree trunk and somersaulted together through the fresh snow, then took off again, zig-zagging among the trees with shrill calls. They were hairy woodpeckers, maybe on a first date. As Michal’s dad used to say, “There’s always something new to see.”