Outside our back door there is a tree and in the overlap of its coniferous branches is a small, obscured, protected space where a robin has built a nest.
In the nest, two chicks have hatched, and the robin spends her days as a kind of avian FedEx courier bringing worms and grubs and dropping them into tiny beaks that never seem to close with satiety.
My wife spends her early mornings and evenings standing unobtrusively on a chair photographing the comings and goings and the constant maternal care. When I come out on the porch, by contrast, through some shimmering signal shot through Creation, the robin evidently knows a stranger is at hand and flies around the yard in ways clearly designed to lead a designated predator—me—away from her nest.
