My younger sister called me early this evening to say hello.

“I’m outside trying to find the robin that’s been singing,” I said. Abby knows that I’m a birder, so she did not find this statement to be unusual. “I keep hearing him in the mornings, and I want to see if I can see him. And there he is!”

I finally saw him high up in a tall tree’s branches, his red-orange breast lit up with the reddish light of the setting sun.

“Good Lord, I can hear him, too,” said Abby over the phone. “That’s one loud robin.”

“Yeah, he is,” I said. “He’s way up in this tree that’s right next to the Seaman’s Bethel.” Then to be polite, I deliberately walked away from the robin’s tree, and had a nice long chat with Abby. Tomorrow I’ll go back and see if I can see his mate, and their nest — surely there must be a nest. It would be quite something to find a robin’s nest in the middle of the city.