The Gift of Disappearing

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory.. ~ 1 Corinthians 2:7.

A few blogs back, I wrote about the need to hear a particular bird to make sure it was a Blue-winged Warbler and not a Golden-winged Warbler. Either would be rare for this far north, but Blue-winged Warblers are the more likely of the two. The bad news is that Golden-winged Warblers are disappearing. The good news is that humans are not the cause (for a change). The reason is cross-breeding. Golden-winged and Blue-winged Warblers are so similar, both genetically and behaviorally, that they regularly interbreed, producing both specific hybrids (Brewster’s and Lawrence’s Warblers), but then later generations carry bits of their ancestry, showing a mix of features from both species. That is how the Blue-winged Warbler on my year list “disappeared” recently.

In June, I reported two Blue-winged Warblers on an eBird list, with a recording and a couple of photos. So I was surprised that it took a long time for the reviewer to confirm the sighting. The reviewer pointed out something I had glossed over. Everything on the bird looked like a Blue-winged Warbler, except for the feature that gives the Golden-winged its name, yellow wing bars! Aside from that, this bird lacked every other field mark to indicate Golden-winged, so truthfully, I didn’t notice the color of the wing bars. In the field, the sun was nearly directly behind the bird, so I was lucky to get a decent shot, let alone trust that the colors were correct. Now I was watching my county year list slip from 150 to 149 “plus one taxa.” Ironically, the sighting increased in rarity while it decreased in certainty. It is both exciting and disappointing.

I wavered between pride and shame. Then I realized that the lesson here was what my friend Eric Elnes would call the gift of disappearing. In his book, Gifts of the Dark Wood, he tells us “both pride and shame tend to fabricate an image of ourselves that is ultimately too small to live within.” We are limited by our small imaginations. Just like I didn’t imagine the possibility of a rare backcross hybrid warbler, we can all miss out on mystery when we can’t conceive that it is even possible! The gift of disappearing “provides us a certain spaciousness and grace to move about life freely.” Isn’t that a gift worth seeking?

Prayer: Holy Conjurer, work your magic in us, that poof we find mystery. Amen.