Misdirected enthusiasm

In Orewa recently we saw at least a thousand godwits flying south along the beach, presumably to assemble at Miranda prior to their autumn migration to the northern hemisphere. I am always filled with wonder that they know how to do it.
In the Australian National Botanic Garden last week I encountered some other birds who knew what they had to do and were diligently doing it. There was a galah industriously hollowing out a nest site in a tree; a red-browed firetail finch carrying a feather as big as himself; and an immature male bower bird dancing among blue bottle tops and little bunches of twigs in the makings of a bower.
They were all quite magical encounters. All three birdswere doing what their instincts told them to do for courtship and mating, nesting and raising young. But they were all doing it at the wrong time. Somehow, their internal clocks told them that after long heavy rains, the bright sunshine must mean it was that time of the year when all thoughts turn to love. However, Spring is months away and there will be a hard Canberra winter to endure before it comes.
It’s just as well that the godwits have a more reliable sense of the day when they must head out on their long ocean migration. I suppose the lesson for me is that, for some things, there is a season that is right. It is important for me to be living in that moment and not in some other time, no matter how much I am enjoying what I’m doing.