Painting the sky with beautiful curves

Lately I have been watching birds. There are birds all over this town, if you look up and notice, and they are playing out their own complex struggles of dominance and coexistence. I sometimes watch birds out of my window, high up, and so get to see them flying past this canvas of my vision. They each fly according to some pattern which seems destined – as if they simply fly along an invisible thread, through the channel which is there for them. I have taken to drawing their paths, because now that I watch like this I can’t just see the bird, it’s downward head and stretched pointed face, its wings blunt and pointed down from a plump body or up and ending in thinning feathers curved and arced, but I see the very arc that they take through space. I see piglet tail-like curls where the little birds fly in swift curves, I see straight lines like arrows from heavy cockatoos who sink into the air and thrust forward, the gently gently updraft curve of a wattle bird, the companionable wiggle towards a tree by two honey birds. And I wonder – why have I never seen this before? As if these birds are painting the sky with these beautiful curves and I never even knew.