Hooded Larks

The other day in the park, I saw a flock of small birds feeding on some bread crumbs. They with dark brownish feathers are the types of the birds we often see in our back yard and the shrubs around the cities. While foraging, the group chirped out some pleasant notes. But one of them stood out on its own. It did not join the others after the trails of broken-up breads. Finally, this timid bird got its picks and disappeared.

This little flying machine may not belong to this flock. It does look a bit different from the others in the group. There are some soft plumes like a paper fan sticking out from the sides of its wee head. They are not unlike the head dresses that many Catholic nuns wore in the old days. And this little bird with a habit-like hood got me excited. I thought I had come upon the hooded larks that were very dear to a thirteen-century saint from Assisi, Italy.

Because these hooded larks dressed like nuns, they symbolized what Brother Francis had preached: humility. Sister larks became very special to the most reverend saint in the Catholic church.

We all know Saint Francis of Assisi for the poor was akin to animals too. There were incredible stories of him negotiating a truce between a big bad wolf and the townspeople. So both the man-eating beast and its prey could live side-by-side in the same neighborhood peacefully. He once set free a live tench that was given to him into the water. And when Brother Francis spoke, the birds listened.

As it is told in God’s Fool*, during the last Christmas celebration before the humble Saint’s passing, Brother Francis was wishing the festivity in which the rich put on splendid feasts for the poor and other creatures would never end. For his love of the birds, he declared if he was to see the emperor, he would ask him to order grains be scattered on the roads on Christmas day for the birds, especially his sisters, the larks.

To my great disappointment, I never saw that hooded bird again. But the chance sighting of this little creature prompted me to revisit these brotherly interactions between the late Saint and many wildlifes around him. - Ayee

*From Julian Green's God’s Fool, translated by Peter Heinegg in 1985