Nature Mentors Her Own

I was focused on getting my garden in when a commotion in the tangle of trees and shrubs about 50 feet to my west–beyond our grassy open yard–demanded my attention. I looked up in time to see what I think was a hawk hurtling through the undergrowth. Something was dangling from its talons. Its powerful beating wings brushing the branches as it escaped with its prey made a startling noise. Seconds earlier the predator's presence had been shrouded in silence. Now, for one more second I stood watching the suddenly visible apparition fly into hiding.

A cacophony of bird chirps and calls began. Something was clearly wrong. That noise gradually subsided into a single series of chirps that continued for several minutes. To me they sounded like a robin when an intruder approaches her nest. Chirp....chirp....chirp....until finally, silence again–the mourning, the keening complete. I reflected on nature's ways: a hawk's offspring, perhaps, feeding upon a robin's. I turned back to my garden.

Not ten minutes later I looked up again and saw a small robin family making its way across the grassy area between the scene of the abduction and me. An adult male led the procession. He seemed uninterested in eating; he looked to me to be watching for danger. Behind him an adult female was followed by a juvenile. She was hunting food, cocking her head toward the ground to see grubs and worms and whatever else falls victim to robins' foraging. The trailing adolescent chirped impatiently until mother picked up a morsel in her beak and turned to put it in his or hers. I think the child was learning how to find its own food by watching her example.

I watched the trio for several minutes, wondering if moments before there had been four in this family. What if these parents had just lost a child and the youth, a sibling? Was their period of mourning so quickly over, cut short by the urgency to eat and to learn how to eat? Was it not dangerous for them to be out in the open so soon, or did they somehow sense that the just-satisfied hawk was now less a threat to them, that now was the time to be out and about the business of living? I hoped I would not witness another stealth attack, but they made their way through the grass and back into cover, and I finished my day's gardening chores.

Mentoring teaches how and it teaches when. It teaches the rhythms of risk and opportunity. Nature mentors her own. Can she can teach us the art of mentoring our offspring to learn not only the work of life, but also the timing of living?