All the birds are full of business.

Image source: Retrographix

The nights here have been cool and I have been sleeping with the bedroom window wide open. In the mornings, the birds are up before I am and I awake to their cheerful songs. This morning's chorus reminded me of the passage celebrating the month of May in The Shape of a Year by Jean Hersey:

Every morning a bluebird perches among the apple blossoms that cover the tree thick as popcorn. At dusk a thrush sings from down the valley, and the little warblers and 'witchety' birds squeak along the brook. Now and again a robin puffs with pride as he struts across the green grass, head cocked, listening for a worm. 

All the birds are full of business. Leave a length of yarn or string on the terrace and in an hour it is gone. The responsibilities of householding are uppermost. We keep watch to see who is building where. The phoebes are settling over the door to the shop. At one point several feet of nylon line trailed down from the nest they were building  I thought someone might inadvertently catch this and pull the carefully made structure apart so I cut it off where it dangled. I should have had more confidence in the phoebe, who knew exactly what she was doing. By night the remaining loose end had been woven up into the nest. Had she counted on the part I took off? How often we human beings interfere where we have no business -- and help in areas where help is not needed,