“Where are you? The Amazon?”
A friend messaged me on a social networking site, a response to my posts about the birds on my feeder. Two of them piqued his interest and he posted pictures of the birds I’d named. One was the Brown-Headed Cowbird, the other was a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, neither of which he had ever seen; hence, the “Amazon” reference. As for me, I had seen the Cowbird before, but the Grosbeak was new, and had it not been the featured bird for May on my calendar of birds, I might not have identified it properly. A recent sighting of a small bird had me as mystified as had the Grosbeak, but once again, my calendar rescued me. The June bird was the Chipping Sparrow, the rufous-headed little visitor to the seed-party house.
I have written of the friend who got me interested in birds, and “The Birdman of Indianapolis,” whom I met at my favorite cidery. One friend finds my interest in birds out of keeping with her knowledge of me — “I don’t even know you,” she once said, wonderingly — but most people listen, nod, nod, and briskly introduce another subject. My first daughter has embraced my late-life passion, and will send me pictures of an unknown avian, asking me to identify it. My first granddaughter is mildly interested in my passion, and will text message me with descriptions of bird calls she hears.
My youngest daughter, with whom I share a home, and for whom I provide childcare for a two-year-old, is less enthusiastic about the birds, for she says that she can hear House Sparrows partying beneath the shingles above her bedroom. I’ve tried to indoctrinate my second granddaughter in the tradition of “Birding With Cool Papa,” and when American Robins built a nest on the downspout of the corner of the house (the outside corner of her room) my morning routine with her was to go greet “Tweet” sitting on the nest. She would wave, and say “Hi Cheet” (her version of “Tweet.”) The Robins were gone in about two weeks (a much lighter sentence than the 18-to-27 years given many human parents) but Myah waves to every bird with the same greeting. She alerted me to the elusive Ruby-Throated Hummingbird when she saw it at the sugar water feeder.
My ornithologist friend, Wes Homoya, can identify birds by their calls, and at the outset of the coronavirus quarantine period, asked his social networking friends to send him audio and video of birds as a test of his skills. I didn’t participate in the game because I had no way of knowing whether or not his call on the calls was correct. But I do know some bird songs, as well as the “eek eek” of the Killdeer that gambol with spindly-legged anxiety in the marshy grasses across from the Weekly View’s office always makes me smile. Near 10th and Shortridge, the Northern Mockingbird trots out its three-stage call from the trees.
Just off the highway near 23rd and Dequincy Streets, my friend and I strode the paths of Pogue’s Run Art and Nature Park, where Canada geese arrowed the water in front of a cluster of little ones; we heard the call of Red-Winged Blackbirds, and watched their colorful flight. The “chitter chit” of tree swallows punctuated their sharp boomerang flights across the water.
Birdsong is not merely the cries, but the sight of birds, busy in the trees and skies and scampering between the grasses on the lawns and in the fields. How can you love, and not love a bird?
cjon3acd@att.net