bushtit

The bird I saw was a bushtit, the tiniest songbird in North America.

A twittering bushtit adds a bit of plant fluff to its unusual hanging nest, drooping like an old sock from the branch of a eucalyptus tree.

Yes, one of the species in that family of birds is the American bushtit.

I bob from corridor to corridor past all the nests — the cuplike robin’s nest, the socklike bushtit nest, swallows using small cavities in the trees.

Staring at the bushtit, in the quiet and the green, I said to him: “I wish I could do this. I wish I could learn about birds and then go look for them.”