There’s a patch of bare ground I’ve become interested in, across the road from the house, in the field that otherwise still stretches white with snow out to Route 2.

I’m not the only one interested in this patch of ground. The day before the first day of spring, my son spotted a bluebird on the wire above that spot. As bluebirds will do, it flew from the wire to the ground, then up again, and back and forth for a while. I don’t know if he found any good grubs in that half-thawed earth, but he was looking.

Later, in between closer inspections of that same patch, two glowing blue males sat on the signs that warn snowmobilers to stay on the trail.

Then Donn came in to say there were two killdeer in the same space, and I watched them for a spell. Unlike the flitting bluebirds, they hop about less and seem to nobly stand guard, unbothered by the passing traffic a few yards away. Even through the window, I could hear them calling to one another.

The next day I heard a red-winged blackbird begin his spring chorus from another perch over this patch.

In the backyard, which is filled with large, old maples riddled with deadwood, the usual winter residents are stepping up their activities. Besides the chickadees and nuthatches and blue jays, we watched a female cardinal and a pileated woodpecker pass through. This space is usually dominated by the starlings, which pop in and out of the holes in the dead branches where they soon will be nesting.

Winter loses its hold in the face of these optimists. Soon the mornings will be filled with bird song of all kinds, everywhere.

Sunday, carpooling to the Farmington Friends’ meeting, I mentioned the increased bird activities around the house, and we began to talk about the beauty of birds.

“There’s nothing in my opinion more beautiful than a male wood duck in full plumage,” Daniel offered.

“Unless it’s an indigo bunting with the sun glinting off its feathers,” I countered. “Or a male rose-breasted grosbeak on the other side of the glass at the bird feeder two feet away from your nose.”

“I like the male cardinal, the way it sings high in the tree tops,” Glenn said.

“And then there’s the oriole,” Cynthia added.

I think it’s like summer berries. I always think there’s nothing better than strawberries, until raspberries ripen – which soon are displaced by blueberries, and then they all become a distant memory in the face of fresh blackberries. You love the one you’re with.

Later, in the quiet of the Quaker meeting, I thought some more about the birds and the unselfconscious, natural glory of their plumage. From way back to King Solomon and up to today’s body-obsessed movie stars, no human effort has matched what birds do just because they are birds.

Ornithologists may tell us that bird song is lust and territorial testosterone, but I frankly don’t buy that story. When I hear spring birds sing, it is impossible for me to separate it from an unquenchable joy for life and new beginnings. I’m sure there is something in every human heart that knows that song and sings with it.

As sure as the killdeer were unbothered by the passing traffic, the drivers in the speeding cars were unbothered by the killdeer they didn’t see. That’s fine. We have places to go, things to do. The killdeer wouldn’t be comfortable if we always stopped our cars and gawked.

But we have to find moments to stop and look and listen, to let our hearts vibrate with the cosmic music and get back in tune after a long winter.