I keep an early schedule, rising before the sun and sometimes falling to sleep before the sun sets.
So my day often begins and ends watching the sky change from dark to bright and bright to dark, and listening to birds sing to the start and finality of the day.
I’m not paying more attention these days, but I’m hearing and seeing “outdoors” in new ways, hoping experiences with nature will relieve the anxiety of a stressful time.
I’m not alone.
One morning after the governor ordered beach gatherings limited to 10 people and before local governments ordered our beaches closed, I took a walk on the multiuse path at Coquina Beach.
Warblers filled the Australian pine trees that arch overhead and their song entertained as well as anything you’ll hear with earbuds.
I stopped to try to locate the birds and got dizzy looking into the sunlight radiating through gaps in tree branches. I spotted mockingbirds, blue jays, a gray catbird, common grackle, and palm, prairie, pine and hooded warblers.
Other people walked and biked the path that morning, most practicing social distancing. I talked from afar with a few, who recognized nature has a role in the health of mind and body, as does exercise.
Even those staying home — self-isolating or quarantined to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — can fill a natureRx by throwing open a window, propping a door or going to the lanai for a wildlife serenade.
Working from my back porch, I can watch squirrel gymnastics in the live oak trees, count butterflies and, honestly, see pollen cascading before my eyes.
The yellow flowers of clustered purslane open with intensifying sunlight and the chiseling by downy woodpeckers quiets at noon.
Out front, rabbits munch on tender spring grass and occasionally hop into a bed of overgrown ferns, blue jays imitate osprey and the doves coo at everyone and everything.
And when outdoors or open air can’t be experienced, I can spy online — via bird cams — nesting eagles, osprey and owls, feeding cardinals, grosbeaks and hummingbirds.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s AllAboutBirds.org is one of the most reliable sites for bird cams. The site launched about eight years ago and since, tens of millions of viewers have visited to see red-tailed hawks, barred owls, Bermuda petrels, albatross, ospreys, herons, blackbirds and woodpeckers in live-action.
Wonder what happens when a pileated joins the breakfast “feeder”?
We can keep our social distance and stay home — and yet, still get close to nature.
This column was published in The Islander newspaper.
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