Birds Bear Witness

Yesterday, when I walked the perimeter of a nearby lake with my friend Ann, we came upon the dead body of a great egret.

She lay face down in the dark water, one snow-white wing thrown like a shawl over the trunk of a fallen tree. There was nothing we could do for her, and we could not know the cause of her death.

Two smaller egrets of a different species—snowy—stood very close by on the tree trunk, unmoving. Keeping watch.

For the second time in my life, I saw the witness of birds for one of their own.

Years ago, on St. Vincent Island, I came upon a beautiful shorebird called a red knot dying on the sand (see page 139–40 in I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird for the full story).

A sanderling, two yellow legs, and a second red knot flanked the bird while she sipped her last few breaths. We must know that other-than-human creatures grieve and honor their dead, just as we do.

Check out the amazing online journal Dark Matters: Women Witnessing to read a preview from my new book about another bird, the magical great blue heron. https://darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com/dec2025/great-blue-herons-six-true-things/

• Call or write your Representatives!

• Participate in rallies, protests, vigils!

• Donate to ACLU, Indivisible, etc!

• Find ways to offer sanctuary and food to terrified immigrants!

• What’s your path of witness/resistance?

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  Writers need companions, too

Writing is by nature a lonely pursuit. Every Wednesday, I treasure the company of the writer Mary Jane Ryals at her house or mine. Our cats accompany us. We do not critique or read aloud. We simply sit nearby one another and go deep into the stories we must tell. Image below is MJ and Scorch.