not a panda

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“Can we find a panda bear?” the little girl in the second grade at Dandridge Elementary asked me.

I was leading her class on a guided nature walk at Ijams. The topic of the morning was animals and their habitats but finding a panda in South Knoxville was probably not going to happen.

On the River Trail east of the boardwalk we did encounter a prothonotary warbler working its way trough the understory above the Tennessee River. The class could tell we had found a wondrous thing by my excitement. I hopped up and down, “There’s a beautiful bird,” I exclaimed. “A prothonotary that likes to nest in a tree near the water.”

The bright lemon yellow and gray New World warblers often raise their families in abandoned downy woodpecker holes. And even though it was not a panda bear, I think they were excited as well, but second graders have trouble containing their everyday characteristic enthusiasm, so how could I tell?

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