On an icy January morning, during my daily pre-dawn walk to the gym, I heard a cardinal singing from high in the branches of a leafless tree. “That’s strange,” I thought. “Spring is still a long way off in Ohio.” This morning, the same cardinal sits singing in that same tree more than two months later as I walk past at 5:30 am. I’m reminded of the mockingbird that would sing through the night in a tree outside our window in Southern Arizona.

Cardinals were known as Virginia Nightingales in eighteenth-century England or Winter Redbirds because of their stark red contrast against white winter snow. Then, and now, they have had a variety of symbolic meanings, have been named state bird in seven US states, and serve as mascots for many sports teams. For me, the bird conveys the sense of a solitary observer, patiently waiting.

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