A Mystery, A Gift
My Dear People,
For a year, and maybe for two, I had been aware of the purple martins in Shockoe Bottom. But I had not gotten there to see them. Until this week.
They gather hundreds of feet up, wooshing and washing and gliding; their numbers building by the thousands, as dark approaches. And then, all of a sudden, the first of what Jeff Schapiro describes as "Mobius Strip-like" formations -- Nelson called them "bird-nados"-- appear, as groups of several hundred martins come barreling down from on high, the birds impossibly managing to pull out of their dive, at the very last second, to alight in the pear trees just north of the Farmers' Market.
Even as you're standing right there watching, it's hard to believe. And it's beautiful. And a little hypnotic.
More than 25,000 of them. They have come to Richmond each summer for the last several years now. Currently there is only one other place in the country where such large martin flocks can be viewed from land.
In a couple of weeks or so, they'll head south, as in South America south. We hope they'll be back next year, but we don't really know. One year they just showed up in our pear trees. Another year they might just show up in some other city's pear trees.
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A mystery, a gift.
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Like Butch.
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Thanks be to God.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
