What a swell morning to be alive.

Sunday. I’m in the Adirondack chair on the patio soon after 8. The air is crisp, the sky cloudless.

I gaze across the weedy lawn I mowed yesterday to a rank of azaleas in bloom, white with pink accents.

For the moment, my only companions are birds.

Two houses over, a murder of crows has for 30 minutes kept up a cawing racket high in a stand of tall trees. Three crows at first, then a few more, then still more.

I’m tempted to compare the crows to our Congress but dismiss that thought as unfair to the birds. As I wrote that last sentence, I tried again to count. Fifteen? Twenty? Something’s up. I wish I understood.

The feeders by the azaleas have drawn quieter visitors. A pair of cardinals. A house finch. A nuthatch and cowbird. Underneath, a white-throated sparrow scratches the leaf litter. I hear innumerable chirps and tweets and warbles – and farther off, a woodpecker’s rat-a-tat. And still the crows’ caws.

Yes, what a swell morning to be alive.