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Maybe it's as far from the mainstream traditional idea of spiritual sanctuary as we can travel without actually leaving the concept in abstraction, but I want to diverge from the path for a moment and take a rest, a breath.  As I visit spiritual centers in the Birmingham area and consider my own spiritual design, I continually go back to one place for peace:  my neighborhood. 

Roebuck Springs and I were love at first sight.  The first time my husband and I drove down the narrow, shady lanes into the neighborhood with our real estate agent, we swooned at the sloping, heavily treed lots, the mix of tudor, craftsman, bungalow, box cottage and 1940s ranch homes flanking the streets.  True, the neighborhood has been squeezed in by I-59, but the other side of the neighborhood is the backside of Ruffner Mountain, separated from my front yard by only a few lucky streets of the South Highland neighborhood.   Sitting here in my dining room, with all of the trees bare, I am only a quarter of a mile from an I-59 overpass.  I cannot see or hear the interstate at all.  Instead, at this particular moment, I hear the white noise of starlings in a tree in my neighbor's yard.

But these starlings are only the passers by, nature's cue that the season will soon change.  As you drive up Ridge Road, the main artery of Roebuck Springs, you will see signs posted along the curves that read "Bird Sanctuary."  This neighborhood is a residence to birds you would struggle to find anywhere else in the city.  I think the best way to tell you about what it means to be a resident of Roebuck Springs is anecdotally...

I am a walker.  No, I live for long walks.  My husband says that I am like a dog: I must have plenty of walks and sunshine to be happy.  If my walks are skipped, I may tear the house apart trying to rid myself of that excess energy.  We go on walks so often, in fact, that when we go to neighborhood gatherings, neighbors actually call us The Walkers. 

Roebuck Springs' streets are hilly, winding, and the scenery is ever changing.  Not since childhood have I felt so connected to the shifting seasons.  Spring bursts through in fiery quince, ghost-white dogwood, butter dripping forsythia.  Summer is lush oaks and tree-frog symphonies.  Autumn is the flame of red maples and golden poplars.  And winter reveals the delicate underpinnings of nature's perfect architecture. With so many trees and plants, what follows? 

Birds.

OWLS

It was that early morning purple hour, just before the darkness begins to succumb to sunrise, when I heard in the yard a call.  It was a repititious, guttural call -- not the hoot of a cartoon owl.  A minute later, it was followed by an unmistakable "Who-ah?"  From one side of the yard to the other, back and forth they went, the nuanced questions and answers of two Barred Owls. The pair of figures stared down at us with their skeletal faces.  We stood perfectly still and stared back at them.

Maybe it was weeks later that we were walking around dusk and heard strange twittering coming from the trees all around us.  We couldn't really see the source of the noises, but we knew some strange bird was lurking.  This was not the who-clucks of the barred owl.  We kept our eyes fixed upward as we walked, and rounding the curve for the last quarter mile home, we saw two giant creatures silently glide and land before us on the limb of a dead tree.  The pair of figures stared down at us with their skeletal faces.  We stood perfectly still and stared back at them.  In a moment, one of them spread her wings magnificently outward and let out what I could only describe at the time as a horrible shreik.  500 years ago, I would have been sure I'd just been handed my death.  When the owls finally took flight again, called away by some chipmunk's inperceptible movements, we ran home and found their picture in our book:  Barn Owls.

We have had so many owl encounters since those early days - one night we and some dinner guests stood in our yard, held by the gaze of a Barn Owl and her two owlets standing just feet from us on a telephone wire.  Some mornings they sit just outside our office window on a tree branch.  We've even identified a female Barred Owl whose right eye is missing.  (I imagine a terrible tangle with a crow's nest...)  These owls were the gateway into our birding adventures, kept us looking out our window and noticing just how diverse the residents of our neighborhood really are.

YARDBIRDS

A list of birds we see through our picture window on a daily basis: 

Purple Finch,  House Finch, Carolina Chickadee, Northern Flicker (a.k.a. Alabama's State Bird, the Yellowhammer), Red Headed Woodpecker, Brown-Headed Nuthatch, Tufted Titmouse, Gold Finch, Cedar Waxwing,  Red Bellied Woodpecker, Purple Martin, Indigo Bunting, House Wren, White-Breasted Nuthatch, Pileated Woodpecker, and of course Robins, Blue-Jays, Cardinals, Mockingbirds and Brown Thrashers. 

Most remarkably, last Winter, we looked out the window to see a tiny white bird on the feeder.  In our five years of backyard birding, we hadn't ever come across a white bird in our bird book.  He flew away before we could get a thorough read on his size, any markings or a call.  We spent a few days observing the feeder, waiting for his return.  In several spottings, we found trace dark markings on his wings and throat and finally saw him stand on the porch ledge and let out a terrific trill - the kind that can only come from a chickadee.  In fact, we had an albino chickadee!  With all the owls and other birds of prey patroling the skies, I feared for this little white bird - he was not to be easily camouflaged in the winter trees!  I'm happy to report that a year later, we still see him daily taking seed at the feeder.

WATERBIRDS

If you haven't inferred from the name of our neighborhood, Roebuck Springs contains several spring heads.  (Although, ironically, our namesake spring, also the site of the Great Fish Kill of '07, is now removed from our neighborhood by I-59.)  Wilson Springs along with a few others feed into what was once the neighborhood's swimming pool.  The now private pool spills over into a stream which pools into a small pond and then exits on the other side of 4th Avenue South.  When we first had our house under contract, we'd drive into the neighborhood at night after work and explore.  Every time we crossed the tight bridge that runs over the little stream separating the pool from the pond, we'd stop and roll down the windows to smell the water and listen to the frogs singing.

Once we moved into the neighborhood and began our walking rituals, we made the habit of always stopping on the bridge to look first at the pool and then cross to look at the pond on the other side.  Here we started to see the visiting waterbirds.  Of course, there were many blue herons (so strange to see in flight sometimes above our house,) but what fun to see all the tourists!  Wood Ducks,  Ring-Necked Ducks,  Ruddy Ducks and Mallards, all skimming the icy water at different The quest for these birds' identity kept me on the porch steps long hours in the evening, watching and waiting.  times of the year.  Killdeer scuttle along the banks, mother-bird dragging her little wing on the ground, feigning injury to save her birdlets. 

Last Spring, a most interesting family moved right into our neighbor's tree.  Two Yellow-Crowned Night Heron appeared quite suddenly just before Easter, trapsing through our yard.  I first caught sight of them just out of the corner of my eye and turned only to see the blur of their abrupt and noiseless departure.  The quest for these birds' identity kept me on the porch steps long hours in the evening, watching and waiting.  (Yes, I was the one sitting on the porch staring into your yard with binoculars!)  When I finally got a good look, I knew they were small herons of a kind I'd never seen before.  I was amazed that these funny, stick-legged mates were nesting so close to us, all the way on the opposite side of the neighborhood from the water. 

They picked a high branch in a hickory tree two houses down, borrowing sticks from the dead tree by our driveway to build a large, oblong nest.  It was soon clear in the coming weeks that there were two new arrivals in the nest.  We watched them feed their young at dusk each night, only able to see the long, slender open beaks of the babies peeking out of the nest.  And like so many hurried travelers, they were soon gone without a goodbye.

When we first met our neighborhood president, his first question to us was, "What birds have you seen?  Anything unusual?"  The smile on his face indicated more than mere curiosity.   He was testing us.  Pride of Roebuck Springs residents is rooted in the secrets the neighborhood bears and you can bet you are expected to know the history of your neighborhood.  But you are especially expected to know a little something about birds.  Mr. President wanted to see:  how much did WE know about birds?

Over the last few years, Mr. President, I have learned more about birds than I ever thought I would.  Their behaviors, their calls, their nests, their favorite suet...  Oh, yes, I can see my retired self, now.  Birding vacations in an RV, here I come!

On the days when the world seems so big and busy, when my head is pounding, when I am unable to find joy on my own, my neighborhood surprises me with its gift.  Some strange feathered creature will light right in my view, call to me in the middle of the night, sing to me from the chimney cap, or burst colorfully across my path.  Nature, right in the middle of the city, here to remind me how small my problems are, how big the world is, and what beauty is just out my window. 

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