It was a sunny Sunday, and I sat on my front porch reading “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen. An abundance of nature music made me lift my head, often. Birds called out, the audio track to a burgeoning spring, and across the street, a young tree, branches dusted with magenta buds, grew between two gnarled and woody patriarchs. Across this vision drifted a small white butterfly, its path through the air seemingly erratic. I saw a similar butterfly last spring, and its flight was much the same, though a House Sparrow was in hot pursuit.
In February of this year, I went on a “Feathers and Fermentation” tour, which lifted off from Ash & Elm Cider Company in an Indy Brew Bus and landed at the Eagle Creek Park Ornithology Center. The group saw a video of “The Secret Love Life of Birds,” humorously narrated by park manager Will Schaust, who pointed out that, in spring, the birds get busy: Babies need to be made. And it is spring, now: House Sparrows fly from beneath the eaves of the house I live in, and chitter excitedly in the bush by the driveway. A fat sparrow sits above me on a wire that leads to the rear of the house, a twig in its mouth. On the downspout, I discovered the beginnings of a nest, the probable new home for baby robins. On the street that sunny Sunday, runners passed, going east and west. A young strong woman confidently covered the broken ground of the sidewalk, her arms and legs moving in appropriate concert with her brisk passage. Another woman labored steadily, but with as much determination. It is the nature of spring: Runners run by, the young with long, strong strides that gobble the ground. Others, committed to running but unable to achieve lift, stomping and striving.
Later that spring week, I prammed my soon-to-be two-years-old granddaughter down the Pennsy Trail, and she sang out “Hi!’ to the passing walkers and runners. We paused as I attempted to show her a rabbit in a field, a yellow finch in a tree, and note, in the distance, the trill of a Red-Bellied woodpecker. I freed her from the pram, and she ran away from me, knowing that I would run to her. I pointed out the black and white cat lying on a strip of grass beside the trail; we passed the cat without stopping, and the cat moved deeper into the bush.
The pursuit of the butterfly by the House Sparrow last spring was an aerial pas de deux played out hungrily by the bird, but with seeming insouciance on the part of the insect. I watched in wonder as the sparrow executed moves that amazed, its flaps down and tail flared as it braked and stabbed its beak at the white butterfly, which changed course in mid-air, seemingly unconcerned about the pursuit by a hungry bird. I watched the chase and evasion until the two flew away from me; I never saw the sparrow catch the butterfly.
Though this spring is different in many ways from previous springs, the earth’s creatures still look for food for the young, still seek “the strut and trade of charms.” My youngest granddaughter has found a new joy in flowers, and each bright day, we pram or walk to a neighbor’s yard, where she has been granted permission to pluck her “sniffers”: beautiful tulips nearly as large as her head, and a bit of Korean spice viburnum, the delicate petals of which Myah sniffed, and carefully plucked as we walked back home.
Such is life.
cjon3acd@att.net