Tomorrow is Lady Day. Inasmuch as I celebrate the start of a new gardening year, tomorrow is it. March 25th was also the de facto New Year’s Day for most of Roman history and remained a new year celebration up until the Enlightenment in many cultures derived from Rome. So tonight is New Year’s Eve. Sort of…
In any case, it’s time to start something new for the new year. Plant something new. Learn a new skill. Join a new group. Try out a new recipe. Maybe even go someplace you’ve never been… though this year (and probably for the foreseeable future) travel is likely to be difficult. Still, there are probably hidden wonders in your neighborhood. Go investigate something novel.
I do have a small ritual that I try to work on Lady Day. Very early on Lady Day! I get up to listen to the dawn chorus. Maybe, in honor of the new year, you can add this to your springtide observances.
Knowing your place means knowing who you’re living with, which means getting to know the trees and plants, birds and fuzzy critters, in addition to your human neighbors. Along with my daily weather journal, my notebooks on who is hanging out in my garden are indispensable tools for getting to know my place. And listening to the birds in the early morning hours is the best way I know to learn about my avian neighbors. I listen many times a month, often while watching the night skies, to keep tabs on what is going on in my neighborhood. Birds might be active in the daylight, but they try to stay hidden. However, in the morning darkness they are loudly declaiming whatever is important to them, no attempt at hiding their voices.
The dawn chorus is particularly raucous in the spring when birds are finding mates and claiming nesting sites. Migrators are returning with lots of stories. The locals are sharing the news that the travelers missed. There are braggers and boasters and proselytizers and joyful reunions with old friends and family. And, predictably, there’s a good deal of arguing and complaint. But there are also a few, like American Robins (who are actually thrushes), who just sing for the beauty of song. These tend to be the first notes in the symphony. So you want to get up early so you don’t miss the best parts!
The early birds start to sing as the air is stirring before dawn. There is no light in the sky, but the warmth of the sun is drawing the air to the east and chilling the morning. This is the avian cue to wake and sing. So, to catch the first notes, you want to be up and ready to listen sometime around nautical twilight. Look that time up today and set an alarm. (Your body will not wake in the dark…)
The point of this ritual is to listen to your place, so no driving to find “nature”. Nature is wherever you are. If you live in a city, then you’re listening to your city birds. If you live in the boonies, then you have a different chorus. And, while it’s great to learn the birds in other places, today you want to learn about your neighbors, your “nature”.
I try to do this outside, but that’s often impossible at this time of the year. So, when the weather is too uncomfortable for sitting quietly outside, I stay in, crack a window, and listen. (I should note that in bad weather, the birds don’t sing as much. So if it’s very cold or storming, I just go back to sleep…) I don’t want to frighten off the birds with bright light; so if I take notes, it’s on a computer with the screen hidden from bird view. I have also recorded the whole thing on a digital recorder so that I can listen again in the morning light and identify new singers and pick out familiar voices.
But on Lady Day, I usually just listen. I listen for the solitary voices. I listen for calls and responses. I listen for the excitable youngsters who have a lot to say to nobody in particular. And I listen for those divas who are just singing to the Dawn in heartbreakingly beautiful music.
As the sky lightens, I engage my eyes. I watch for activity in the backyard cedars and my jungle. I try to trace the voices back to individual birds or at least note where individual voices are coming from. I watch them take flight and stream into the morning light. And I watch to see where they settle down — because that is likely where they are nesting.
On Lady Day, I will finish the ritual by thanking the birds for their music. Then I will do sun salutes and begin my day.
On other days when I’m listening to learn, I will immediately write down everything I heard, keeping track of what happened when and where. I write down what I’ve seen as well as what I’ve heard. I will also note the weather and, of course, the date because that affects the chorus. Often I will record any interesting observances in the skies as well. Meteors are often seen in the early dawn… So this habit allows me to wish on falling stars. (I ascribe my good luck to the wishing faeries…)
I could just use the computer notes that I’ve taken (though they always need cleaning up because I’m typing without looking at the screen…), but I find that transcribing it into a journal entry helps solidify what I’ve experienced. I also tend to read old notes more often on paper than on the computer. Hence journaling. I can also have journal entries from past years handy to compare with the current year. This helps me see trends. For example, there are fewer owls here than there were just five years ago. (Owls, by the way, call right before going to bed, ergo right before the chorus gets started…)
I have also learned that the crows are much louder in the autumn than in the spring, though they are streaming through the morning and evening year round. It is so eerie to see them flooding the sky and hear nothing at all from their passing. I suspect they are silent in spring because they, like me, want to listen to the lilting music of the migrants…
Evening Pairing
Tomorrow evening after sunset, look to the south to find Jupiter and the waxing first quarter Moon in close conjunction. Jupiter is at magnitude -2.3, so it is only outshone by Venus in the night sky. The Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux shine above and to the left. Pollux is a relatively close neighbor to our Sun at only 34 light-years away. But Castor is fascinating! It’s a multiple star system, composed of six individual stars organized into three binary systems. Imagine the tides on any planetary bodies in that mess! (There probably aren’t any… because the tidal forces would rip planets apart… there’s something to think on, no?)
If you ever want to find Gemini without the assistance of Jupiter and the Moon, look instead for the readily recognizable constellation Orion. The two brightest stars of Orion, blue-white Rigel at the bottom right to orange Betelgeuse at the top left, form a line that points to Gemini.
To think on…
You’ll notice that Jupiter and the Moon are in the “body” of the constellation Gemini, which hangs across the zodiac (the apparent path of the sun). Gemini is a bittersweet tale of brotherly love. The twins, Castor and Pollux, are both sons of Leda, the mortal Queen of Sparta, and they are both named the Dioscuri, the “sons of god”. But only Pollux (Polydeuces) is Zeus’ son. Castor is the son of Leda’s mortal husband, Tyndareus. So only Pollux was immortal.
When Castor met his inevitable fate, Pollux was distraught. He asked his father to allow him to die so that he could be with his twin in the Underworld. Zeus (or Jupiter) decided instead to make both brothers into stars. And so, shorn of human bodies, they live forever together in the night sky.
Turning mortals into stars to confer immortality is a common theme in myths from around the world, but I often wonder what that means… So that’s today’s meditation topic. “Immortality in the stars”…
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 