Of a Feather🪶

On the Bird Eras Tour

After last week’s deeply personal memoir piece about the last days of my mom’s life, I felt called to share something from a different realm of my storytelling — a photo-rich series I call Lately in Nature — exploring how the natural world has long served as an oracle in my life, offering wisdom and guidance along the way.

It’s a thread that winds through my days and everything I write… like the softer current beneath my deeper memoir work, and perhaps the ish part of Memoir-ish.

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I’ve entered what I can only describe as… my bird era. Though, truthfully, I think it’s been revealing itself in quiet, mysterious ways for years.

It started with a few sightings here and there. Nothing dramatic. Then suddenly I became that person pointing out pelicans mid-conversation and marveling at herons like they’re celebrities.

Apparently, I’ve become what you might call an accidental birdist… like the kind who didn’t mean to join the club but somehow ended up with a front-row seat to the show.

For the record, I never considered myself that kind of “bird person.” I don’t keep binoculars on the dash or wake up at the crack of dawn to log sightings in an app, and I definitely don’t have a life list! My only real birding memory was a field trip in grade school led by my best friend’s mom — whose name, fittingly, was Trill Bird! She was like a second mom to me growing up.

I’ve always enjoyed birds as part of the backdrop and soundtrack of life — I just never paid too much attention to who was who… except owls.

Owls have always had my heart. Mysterious, wise, slightly witchy. If it were socially acceptable (and legal), I’d have an owl living in my house. I’ve always thought of them as guardians of the in-between, peeking in from another dimension, keeping watch. Maybe my bird story started there.

Somewhere along the way — without realizing it — I’d been recruited.

These days, I live near the wetlands in Marin, where new feathered characters seem to reveal themselves each time I wander the trails — always beautiful, always graceful, and sometimes arriving with what feels like messages from another realm… like the time a blue heron glided past just as I was asking the universe for clarity. Or the hawk that circled overhead with a snake in its talons — the same week we were moving to a new neighborhood — which felt like a pretty clear message about shedding old skins and rising into something new. Then there were the murmurations, swirling across the sky for seven straight evenings at sunset, like a moving meditation. And the hummingbirds? They’ve basically become part of the family.

Some of my favorite bird sightings, including the hawk with a snake, the flirty turkey and the peacock!

Now I see them everywhere: snowy plovers, great egrets, black-necked stilts, red-shouldered blackbirds, western sandpipers, downy woodpeckers, and those flirty turkeys strutting through the neighborhood (especially around Thanksgiving, which feels… very not right).

Once, a peacock showed up out of the blue and decided my porch in Mill Valley was home. For days, it strutted around like it owned the place. I lived in a little Eichler with floor-to-ceiling windows and could hardly focus on anything else that week. I’d sit there waiting, practically holding my breath, for that glorious moment when it fanned its tail. Every time it did, I lost my mind like a kid at a magic show.

Peacocks are shockingly loud, by the way… somewhere between a scream and a trumpet blast — and by the third night, the entire neighborhood had come by to witness the spectacle. It was a sad day when the owner finally came for it… as if the magic had shimmered into thin air, leaving behind only a few stray feathers and a story that still makes me giggle.

Then there are the Vaux’s swifts. Every fall, thousands fly down the Pacific coast, stopping to roost in chimneys along the way. Here in San Rafael, they spiral into the same two chimneys each evening — and a bunch of us “swifties” gather to watch the spectacle. It’s hypnotic and pure bird magic…

Birds are funny. And wise. And otherworldly. (And yes, technically, descendants of dinosaurs — which just makes them even cooler.)

They’ve taught me to slow down and pay attention to the subtle, the fleeting, and the sacred in the ordinary.

After my mom passed away more than twenty years ago, feathers began showing up as signs whenever I needed reassurance or guidance — and I don’t just mean the kind you see scattered across a park. They tend to appear in the strangest places… like the time a huge hawk feather was waiting for me on the floor of a bathroom stall, or when I found a bright blue one stuck to my windshield, or drifting through the yoga studio just as I walked in. Once, a white feather landed right on my lap while I was crying in the car.

Over time, they’ve become sneaky little affirmations and gentle reminders that she’s still here, that I’m still held, and that everything is going to be okay.

So no, I never planned to become a bird person.

But I think I’ve officially been adopted — and I’m deeply honored to be part of the flock.

And for fun — here are a few more winged beings who’ve brightened my days:

If you enjoyed this story, tap the heart or leave a comment below… I’d love to hear what signs or winged messengers have appeared in your life lately.