Birds, definitely. My mother was a complicated person living in much despair and anger and clearly overstretched with three children. On winter days with not a chance to send us away and outside, she would sit us in front of the window looking out into the garden, where she had spread all sorts of bird food on the snow, gave us a book with illustrations of birds and the task of identifying as many as possible with the promise of some sort of reward. We would sit almost motionless and silent for a considerable length of time and marked our sightings as required.
She died 25 years ago, in agony, and I am certain that she has come to me in the shape of a bird many times since. Only recently, a young hawk flew very low with a loud screetching noise above me as I cycled home, almost touching my helmet, and all I could say was, hi mum.
Sabine, this is such a lovely telling of a complex relationship of mother and children (as all relationships are complex I guess). I love the compassion with which you remember your mother and continue to connect with her through those beloved birds!
Thank you, Sabine, for this. My own mother, who had 3 energetic children born within 3-1/2 years, would have loved her inspired win-win management. And what a gift you offer with your understanding; she did her best. And how lovely for you to feel her spirit reaching out to you. Wonderful sense of the kindness of the universe.
I love this early morning read. I am careful with insects, moths, ants, snails, slugs spiders etc. I move the snails and slugs across the gravel path. I help the fly or wasp trapped in my home find the exit. I talk to the ant roaming the porcelain sink. As much as possible I try not to interfere. I only rescue when necessary. I love saying good morning to the spider who loves in the corner cupboard. All life is precious, even the tiniest.
I've pretty much learned everything that matters from untamed creatures (my father included). But I'd like to focus on this past Saturday. I was camping at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys for the week. Every morning, my husband and I would walk the quiet beach at sunrise--the dunes dotted by marked sea turtle nests. On one of our final mornings, we saw a half-emerged loggerhead sea turtle hatchling that appeared leathery and dead. As I leaned in closely a fly landed by his closed eye and he blinked twice. Late to the party, but ALIVE!
I whispered words of encouragement and he slowly pushed his way from the sand. For 45 minutes, we observed this miraculous creature cross mountains of sargassum, tumble into sandy holes on his back, and ultimately make his way into the water. Maintaining distance, I followed as he braved the currents and waves.
Dare I mention that a 4 ft bonnethead shark darted in front of us when I was knee-deep? Dare I also mention that I hissed some threatening obscenities at said shark along the lines of "Don't touch my %$ing BABY!" Such a big world. Such a tiny, vulnerable creature--guided by instinct and the Earth's magnetic field. One in a thousand survive to reproductive age. One in a thousand. "You've got this, Buddy," I said as his silhouetted body made its way to the Sargasso sea.
Oh Jenny, what a special journey you protected! Turtle is my totem and my family have gifted me with all kinds of turtle mementos. How wise you were to watch and not touch. The NC Aquarium teaches that the taste of the sand on their first journey to the sea, may be one of the ways they find their way back to the ‘right’ beach. They discontinued their nest ‘help’ of gathering hatchlings in a bucket and bringing them to the sea. Now, we can observe the miracle, perhaps carrying a broom to discourage sea gulls if they come.
What a special totem you have! I was admittedly ready to ward off hungry birds with my bare hands🤣...Like my handful of encounters with manatees, I left the experience feeling I'd witnessed something magical. #SEAlebritysightings are the best🙏.
I read Raising Hare earlier this year during a bleak week, and it was such an antidote to the crowded whirl of human worry. It was like burrowing bare feet in grass: textured, real (she doesn’t sugar coat) and grounding. Anyway, I’m in love with blackbirds. 🐦⬛ Can’t say why, when they land in the garden my heart lifts.
Watching birds has been keeping me sane in a mad, mad world. Here in the Philippines the local wild birds include orioles, bulbuls, kingfishers, munias, parrots, swallows, even a Philippine Hawk-Eagle or two. And perhaps the most important way this watching has changed me is through the (fairly recent) revelation that I’m not watching as some outside observer, but as PART OF the natural world… Perhaps best summed up in this 5-line poem:
BIRD WATCHING PART II
it used to be a simple me–it
or a generic though warmer me–them
then came a more nuanced me–her/him
recently a veritable revolution me–you
which has just given birth to a gorgeous us
(First published in poetry collection ‘Dear Planet’; publisher Fidessa Literary, July 2025.)
I would say pigeons, and specifically the pigeons that graced the roof of the parking garage at the hospital where my mom was admitted last summer, and stayed for 37 days until she too, took off.
After long surreal days sometimes 12, often 16, 17 hours spent inside the hospital with my mom, from the ER to the ICU to the heme-onc wing, I would leave and go to the top floor of the parking garage at the hospital and watch, unable to not, as these birds - pigeons - would walk and seem to play and stop and pause and simply stand there… for “long” periods of time… and eventually, each one, at different times, would leap, taking off into flight. When, and how, from exactly where, and why, I did not know, could not know, though I could tell stories about it, but that they would eventually, inevitably take off, into flight, that was a given. That I could be with them and see them and eventually not see them as they ascended up towards the clouds, towards the stars, but know that they weren’t “gone” I just couldn’t see them anymore, not with these ordinary eyes.
And then there was the feather left behind… half inside, half outside the car, my mom’s car, that I had been driving to and from the hospital. And all the feathers since.
So many ways of looking, of seeing the unseen, that these “ordinary” extraordinary pigeons taught me.
Ironically- it’s a box turtle. There is a hard scrabble lawn of sorts nearby. It only gets watered when it rains. I walk along a short path on the outskirts of this patch of land to get to where my truck is parked. One day last summer, I was fascinated to see this little mama digging with all her might, a nest into that hard ground with her flipper looking hind legs. I don’t know much about turtles but do know they like to hang out in ponds or lakes or rivers. None of which exist around her nesting place. She laid her eggs there anyway. When she was finished she used her little back paws to cover the hole with the dirt made soft by her efforts. And then ambled away under a rhododendron bush. Where did she come from? Why has the Universe decided to show me this curious event? What is my responsibility? How will those eggs survive this harsh environment? I made a little cage around the nest with sticks and hoped the gardeners would see it and not run over it with a mower or worse, a weed whacker. My wife was kind and patient with me as I expressed all my concerns and questions. I was worried about the mama box turtle finding her way back to water - the closest of which is about a mile away. I wondered if she would be back to lead her hatchlings back home. I wondered if they would make it. I contacted a wildlife rescue organization and asked the online community what could be done to protect wondering turtles. I was somewhat reassured by my sweetie and the experts when they reminded me that turtles have been around forever. They know what they are doing. When a creature decides it’s ready to make its way down the birth canal- there’s no stopping it. Even if it’s far from home. Even if it’s got to dig out of a rock hard place. I feel a poem coming on. 🐢
I’m pondering “untame.” Often people say, “wild.” Untame is a more interesting word. The taming starts once people are in the wild, thinking that their presence is unobserved when, of course, that’s impossible. We crash. We stink. We invade. We disrupt. We admire. We treasure. We salvage. We covet. Even when we think we’re discrete. The taming continues once the wild is in peopled places. The mere presence of the hare or the horned toad changes us. Mustn’t our humanity change them too? Is that taming? I just spent the past two months backpacking on the PCT, being undomesticated. I rewild myself every other year or so. I’m reluctantly home again, since I have an ill mother-in-law and because of viruses and wildfires. I’m going to be thinking about the wild/tame dialectic over more than one cup of tea of consolation.
I live in Perth, Western Australia, and one of my favourite all- time things to see and hear are the gorgeous black cockatoos..the spectacular red tailed ones, and the rarer, white tailed ones, the Carnabys- those are my favourite. They are so symbolic for me, like an Australian version of the Peace Dove, the Holy Spirit visiting in magnificent, loud and beautiful flocks. They are intelligent, social, unafraid to be noisy, they know when rain is coming, announce it with their cries, remind me that rain and storms should be welcomed, even as you fly to take shelter from them. I am fearful for their future here, as we destroy the big, old trees that are their nesting and roosting places, but somehow I see them and I am hopeful.
Yes I have read the book Raising Hare. It had a profound effect upon me. Perhaps it was the intimacy and trust that spoke volumes. The Goldfinch is a bird that stops me in my tracks when I am in my garden. It’s liquid voice, dazzling plumage and skipping flight motion I find captivating. And to think they are and were popular as caged birds is heartbreaking. To see them free in the garden is pure delight!
The hare is my totem animal and 'Raising Hare' is brilliant. Years ago I used to run an annual conference every March in an old convent in Norfolk - getting up at first light the fields I could see were often full of hares dancing and boxing. My sister saw scores of them once by moonlight up on the Yorkshire Wolds. George Ewart Evans book The Way of the Hare is the definitive hare book for me. Do you know the wonderful 13c poem about the naming of hares. https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/anonymous/NamesoftheHare.html
Daily, I meet the wild: deer grazing in our yard, woodchucks grazing, a heron suddenly changing the face of the sky, rarely, and ever so welcome, a fox, a black bear, a soaring bald eagle. All these lovely creatures reminding me of that within myself that is wild, that longs to be wilder still. Yet, the most powerful impact untamed creatures have had on me are the roadkill I encounter daily on my walks in our rural neighborhood. Especially snakes for some reason. A while ago I created a music video called "Vehicular Trespass". Photographs of roadkill, an attempt to honor all these creatures, left to decompose and return to this Earth as compost. Every moment, each roadkill reminds me that we humans in our "need" to get somewhere else, built paved roads through the woods, fields, and forests, homes to these creatures. And, we tend to move at such a speed, enclosed in our heavy vehicles, that we are violating the lives of these creatures. So, may I offer a moment's pause, a prayer, a praise, for each and every untamed creature in my neighborhood, on this Earth. We are their guests in their homes.
Oh David, I think about this too and say a little prayer for the souls of the animals I see along the road. I often take roads less traveled to see the wildness but I’m afraid these are just high speed cut throughs for others. And I worry about the animals that live nearby. The car drivers are missing so much joy in their hurry!
What a reflective letter that meanders gently through memory, observation, and quiet awe, much like a hare through a morning field.
And now I can’t stop thinking about your question: what untame animal has changed how I see?
Octopuses made me rethink the idea of what intelligence even looks like. They don’t perform it in the ways we’re taught to recognize. They’re quiet, fluid, intuitive. It reminders that there are entire languages of knowing that don’t rely on words or logic. Just presence. Just sensation. Just adaptation. I think the octopus teaches us that it's okay to be soft and strange and powerful all at once. That you can be a mystery even to yourself, and still belong deeply to this world.
kel-lee thanks for this deep reflection. It reminds me of the magic of reading Rupert Sheldrake’s brilliant description of fungi intelligence…..able to map ideal subway system designs better than the computer models. The octopus and fungi operate in a different dimension which invites respect and admiration.
An interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that after my autism diagnosis I have become increasingly comfortable with cockroaches. I find that as I pursue acceptance about things I cannot change about myself I approach the cockroaches with the attitude “they didn’t choose to be cockroaches.”
Sometimes when I experience a moment of particular disdain for myself (why can’t I be more charismatic, more energetic, have more acceptable interests etc.) I’ll say to myself “I didn’t choose to be a cockroach,” and it helps more than any other therapeutic mantra. I realize that this all sounds very kafkaesque, but this never actually hit me while reading metamorphosis. I suppose I had to metamorphose on my own…and also experience a cockroach infestation.
Birds, definitely. My mother was a complicated person living in much despair and anger and clearly overstretched with three children. On winter days with not a chance to send us away and outside, she would sit us in front of the window looking out into the garden, where she had spread all sorts of bird food on the snow, gave us a book with illustrations of birds and the task of identifying as many as possible with the promise of some sort of reward. We would sit almost motionless and silent for a considerable length of time and marked our sightings as required.
She died 25 years ago, in agony, and I am certain that she has come to me in the shape of a bird many times since. Only recently, a young hawk flew very low with a loud screetching noise above me as I cycled home, almost touching my helmet, and all I could say was, hi mum.
Sabine, this is such a lovely telling of a complex relationship of mother and children (as all relationships are complex I guess). I love the compassion with which you remember your mother and continue to connect with her through those beloved birds!
Thank you, Sabine, for this. My own mother, who had 3 energetic children born within 3-1/2 years, would have loved her inspired win-win management. And what a gift you offer with your understanding; she did her best. And how lovely for you to feel her spirit reaching out to you. Wonderful sense of the kindness of the universe.
I love this early morning read. I am careful with insects, moths, ants, snails, slugs spiders etc. I move the snails and slugs across the gravel path. I help the fly or wasp trapped in my home find the exit. I talk to the ant roaming the porcelain sink. As much as possible I try not to interfere. I only rescue when necessary. I love saying good morning to the spider who loves in the corner cupboard. All life is precious, even the tiniest.
I've pretty much learned everything that matters from untamed creatures (my father included). But I'd like to focus on this past Saturday. I was camping at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys for the week. Every morning, my husband and I would walk the quiet beach at sunrise--the dunes dotted by marked sea turtle nests. On one of our final mornings, we saw a half-emerged loggerhead sea turtle hatchling that appeared leathery and dead. As I leaned in closely a fly landed by his closed eye and he blinked twice. Late to the party, but ALIVE!
I whispered words of encouragement and he slowly pushed his way from the sand. For 45 minutes, we observed this miraculous creature cross mountains of sargassum, tumble into sandy holes on his back, and ultimately make his way into the water. Maintaining distance, I followed as he braved the currents and waves.
Dare I mention that a 4 ft bonnethead shark darted in front of us when I was knee-deep? Dare I also mention that I hissed some threatening obscenities at said shark along the lines of "Don't touch my %$ing BABY!" Such a big world. Such a tiny, vulnerable creature--guided by instinct and the Earth's magnetic field. One in a thousand survive to reproductive age. One in a thousand. "You've got this, Buddy," I said as his silhouetted body made its way to the Sargasso sea.
Oh Jenny, what a special journey you protected! Turtle is my totem and my family have gifted me with all kinds of turtle mementos. How wise you were to watch and not touch. The NC Aquarium teaches that the taste of the sand on their first journey to the sea, may be one of the ways they find their way back to the ‘right’ beach. They discontinued their nest ‘help’ of gathering hatchlings in a bucket and bringing them to the sea. Now, we can observe the miracle, perhaps carrying a broom to discourage sea gulls if they come.
What a special totem you have! I was admittedly ready to ward off hungry birds with my bare hands🤣...Like my handful of encounters with manatees, I left the experience feeling I'd witnessed something magical. #SEAlebritysightings are the best🙏.
I read Raising Hare earlier this year during a bleak week, and it was such an antidote to the crowded whirl of human worry. It was like burrowing bare feet in grass: textured, real (she doesn’t sugar coat) and grounding. Anyway, I’m in love with blackbirds. 🐦⬛ Can’t say why, when they land in the garden my heart lifts.
Watching birds has been keeping me sane in a mad, mad world. Here in the Philippines the local wild birds include orioles, bulbuls, kingfishers, munias, parrots, swallows, even a Philippine Hawk-Eagle or two. And perhaps the most important way this watching has changed me is through the (fairly recent) revelation that I’m not watching as some outside observer, but as PART OF the natural world… Perhaps best summed up in this 5-line poem:
BIRD WATCHING PART II
it used to be a simple me–it
or a generic though warmer me–them
then came a more nuanced me–her/him
recently a veritable revolution me–you
which has just given birth to a gorgeous us
(First published in poetry collection ‘Dear Planet’; publisher Fidessa Literary, July 2025.)
The “gorgeous us” seems like a phrase to live into in an ongoing ever evolving way. Thank you Ann for that five line poem!
Love this poem — thank you Ann 🙏
Wonderful!
I would say pigeons, and specifically the pigeons that graced the roof of the parking garage at the hospital where my mom was admitted last summer, and stayed for 37 days until she too, took off.
After long surreal days sometimes 12, often 16, 17 hours spent inside the hospital with my mom, from the ER to the ICU to the heme-onc wing, I would leave and go to the top floor of the parking garage at the hospital and watch, unable to not, as these birds - pigeons - would walk and seem to play and stop and pause and simply stand there… for “long” periods of time… and eventually, each one, at different times, would leap, taking off into flight. When, and how, from exactly where, and why, I did not know, could not know, though I could tell stories about it, but that they would eventually, inevitably take off, into flight, that was a given. That I could be with them and see them and eventually not see them as they ascended up towards the clouds, towards the stars, but know that they weren’t “gone” I just couldn’t see them anymore, not with these ordinary eyes.
And then there was the feather left behind… half inside, half outside the car, my mom’s car, that I had been driving to and from the hospital. And all the feathers since.
So many ways of looking, of seeing the unseen, that these “ordinary” extraordinary pigeons taught me.
Ironically- it’s a box turtle. There is a hard scrabble lawn of sorts nearby. It only gets watered when it rains. I walk along a short path on the outskirts of this patch of land to get to where my truck is parked. One day last summer, I was fascinated to see this little mama digging with all her might, a nest into that hard ground with her flipper looking hind legs. I don’t know much about turtles but do know they like to hang out in ponds or lakes or rivers. None of which exist around her nesting place. She laid her eggs there anyway. When she was finished she used her little back paws to cover the hole with the dirt made soft by her efforts. And then ambled away under a rhododendron bush. Where did she come from? Why has the Universe decided to show me this curious event? What is my responsibility? How will those eggs survive this harsh environment? I made a little cage around the nest with sticks and hoped the gardeners would see it and not run over it with a mower or worse, a weed whacker. My wife was kind and patient with me as I expressed all my concerns and questions. I was worried about the mama box turtle finding her way back to water - the closest of which is about a mile away. I wondered if she would be back to lead her hatchlings back home. I wondered if they would make it. I contacted a wildlife rescue organization and asked the online community what could be done to protect wondering turtles. I was somewhat reassured by my sweetie and the experts when they reminded me that turtles have been around forever. They know what they are doing. When a creature decides it’s ready to make its way down the birth canal- there’s no stopping it. Even if it’s far from home. Even if it’s got to dig out of a rock hard place. I feel a poem coming on. 🐢
I’m pondering “untame.” Often people say, “wild.” Untame is a more interesting word. The taming starts once people are in the wild, thinking that their presence is unobserved when, of course, that’s impossible. We crash. We stink. We invade. We disrupt. We admire. We treasure. We salvage. We covet. Even when we think we’re discrete. The taming continues once the wild is in peopled places. The mere presence of the hare or the horned toad changes us. Mustn’t our humanity change them too? Is that taming? I just spent the past two months backpacking on the PCT, being undomesticated. I rewild myself every other year or so. I’m reluctantly home again, since I have an ill mother-in-law and because of viruses and wildfires. I’m going to be thinking about the wild/tame dialectic over more than one cup of tea of consolation.
Thanks… lovely to read this.
I live in Perth, Western Australia, and one of my favourite all- time things to see and hear are the gorgeous black cockatoos..the spectacular red tailed ones, and the rarer, white tailed ones, the Carnabys- those are my favourite. They are so symbolic for me, like an Australian version of the Peace Dove, the Holy Spirit visiting in magnificent, loud and beautiful flocks. They are intelligent, social, unafraid to be noisy, they know when rain is coming, announce it with their cries, remind me that rain and storms should be welcomed, even as you fly to take shelter from them. I am fearful for their future here, as we destroy the big, old trees that are their nesting and roosting places, but somehow I see them and I am hopeful.
Blessings and peace to you and your work.
Yes I have read the book Raising Hare. It had a profound effect upon me. Perhaps it was the intimacy and trust that spoke volumes. The Goldfinch is a bird that stops me in my tracks when I am in my garden. It’s liquid voice, dazzling plumage and skipping flight motion I find captivating. And to think they are and were popular as caged birds is heartbreaking. To see them free in the garden is pure delight!
I wrote this a year ago, but it seems to address the question…
Dolphin Encounter 🐬
While walking along
the downtown waterfront,
I stopped for a moment.
There it was,
a dolphin,
swimming sideways
with one eye following me,
staring at me.
I didn’t take its picture
because I started staring back.
It looked like a youngster.
Perhaps it was just curious.
Or better yet…
perhaps it was asking,
“Are you my Mother?”
“Snort!”
Eventually, my stare became
a gaze of wonder
as it began to swim
further and further away.
What an amazing creature.
It is in these times
that I know
we are all one and
our porpoise is praise! 😉
The hare is my totem animal and 'Raising Hare' is brilliant. Years ago I used to run an annual conference every March in an old convent in Norfolk - getting up at first light the fields I could see were often full of hares dancing and boxing. My sister saw scores of them once by moonlight up on the Yorkshire Wolds. George Ewart Evans book The Way of the Hare is the definitive hare book for me. Do you know the wonderful 13c poem about the naming of hares. https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/anonymous/NamesoftheHare.html
Sorry about the lack of punctuation - in the middle of baking!
That poem is a gift, Liz - thank you!!
Daily, I meet the wild: deer grazing in our yard, woodchucks grazing, a heron suddenly changing the face of the sky, rarely, and ever so welcome, a fox, a black bear, a soaring bald eagle. All these lovely creatures reminding me of that within myself that is wild, that longs to be wilder still. Yet, the most powerful impact untamed creatures have had on me are the roadkill I encounter daily on my walks in our rural neighborhood. Especially snakes for some reason. A while ago I created a music video called "Vehicular Trespass". Photographs of roadkill, an attempt to honor all these creatures, left to decompose and return to this Earth as compost. Every moment, each roadkill reminds me that we humans in our "need" to get somewhere else, built paved roads through the woods, fields, and forests, homes to these creatures. And, we tend to move at such a speed, enclosed in our heavy vehicles, that we are violating the lives of these creatures. So, may I offer a moment's pause, a prayer, a praise, for each and every untamed creature in my neighborhood, on this Earth. We are their guests in their homes.
Oh David, I think about this too and say a little prayer for the souls of the animals I see along the road. I often take roads less traveled to see the wildness but I’m afraid these are just high speed cut throughs for others. And I worry about the animals that live nearby. The car drivers are missing so much joy in their hurry!
What a reflective letter that meanders gently through memory, observation, and quiet awe, much like a hare through a morning field.
And now I can’t stop thinking about your question: what untame animal has changed how I see?
Octopuses made me rethink the idea of what intelligence even looks like. They don’t perform it in the ways we’re taught to recognize. They’re quiet, fluid, intuitive. It reminders that there are entire languages of knowing that don’t rely on words or logic. Just presence. Just sensation. Just adaptation. I think the octopus teaches us that it's okay to be soft and strange and powerful all at once. That you can be a mystery even to yourself, and still belong deeply to this world.
kel-lee thanks for this deep reflection. It reminds me of the magic of reading Rupert Sheldrake’s brilliant description of fungi intelligence…..able to map ideal subway system designs better than the computer models. The octopus and fungi operate in a different dimension which invites respect and admiration.
For me, it is the red-tailed hawk.
The week my father died, the relentless cry of a juevenile in my neighborhood told me the time was coming and I needed to go.
Since his death, when I see one, I pause and look at the world for just a moment.
Each year is marked by the arrival of the new neighborhood hawks. Some years are earlier than others but it provides a lovely rhythm.
An interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that after my autism diagnosis I have become increasingly comfortable with cockroaches. I find that as I pursue acceptance about things I cannot change about myself I approach the cockroaches with the attitude “they didn’t choose to be cockroaches.”
Sometimes when I experience a moment of particular disdain for myself (why can’t I be more charismatic, more energetic, have more acceptable interests etc.) I’ll say to myself “I didn’t choose to be a cockroach,” and it helps more than any other therapeutic mantra. I realize that this all sounds very kafkaesque, but this never actually hit me while reading metamorphosis. I suppose I had to metamorphose on my own…and also experience a cockroach infestation.
The apple didn't fall far from the tree. Your increasing comfort level with cockroaches is a great example of your courageous compassionate heart.