What we miss while asleep!

Unable to sleep, I slip out of bed and silently traverse the stairs to my “retreat” to pass the hours of darkness before dawn by crocheting.  I am aware that dawn is approaching by the sound of small twittering which alerts all that the sun is about to break the horizon.  

Ching Chings are aroused and fill the morning with their whistles and cackles.  With a loud rustle of their wings, they take flight.  Next, the morning doves with their throaty cooing sounds call to one another over long distances.  Smaller migratory birds whose sounds we have not heard for months chime in with a variety of songs, peeps and chatter.  Hummingbirds arrive for their morning drink making small warning clicking noises at one another along with the ever-present hum of their wings.  These lyrical sounds receive a new beat!  The rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker seeking a meal in the bark of a tree.  Bees begin  to hum bringing their own soft drone into the melody of the dawn. 

 

Finally, wild parrots are heard calling back and forth to one another with a screeching sound as they fly through the morning sky. 

The sun is up and it begins to warm the earth.  A small dory glides by with the putt putt of its motor a constant and the two men on board chatting to one another.  Sometimes, before dawn and before the birds are awake, a paddle dory may glide by.  One can tell its presence in the darkness that is not quite dawn by the sound of a sole fisherman singing softly, his song carrying across the open water.  Is he singing because he is lonely or afraid of the large mass of water his frail boat is gliding across?  Or, is he singing in anticipation of the dawn, his songto simply celebrate the mere joy of being alive?

The sea on this day is flat and calm with faint ripples occasionally appearing across its surface.  The sun that tinted the sky with shades of pink and orange across the horizon is higher in the sky washing out the deep blue black of the night to a white-washed blue.

A new day has begun once again!  Living on an island at the edge of the sea does have its advantages.