This Spring has been a wild ride, so far; the temperatures have varied from a low of 30º to a high of 80º, all in one week. I have covered and uncovered the little plants in the planters at the side of the property I rent, responding to the “too cold for plants” call of the weather reporters. But one of the constants of this time of year are the cries of the birds.
My youngest daughter can identify the call of a Carolina Wren; she admits that the reason she can, is because I sang it for her. My first granddaughter, who lives in New Jersey, had an encounter with Carolina Wrens that I recounted in a column (“Imani and the Carolina Wrens,” The Weekly View, Jan. 4th, 2018.) When I sit on the glider (old folks know what a “glider” is) the house sparrows gather in the bush in front of the porch railing and chastise me for being in their space. Or perhaps, for not stocking my feeder with the seeds they enjoy.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has developed an application that allows users to identify the calls of birds. (On a cool note: The Cornell website has a Carolina Wren as its photo representative.) I have the Merlin app on my phone, and I will frequently pause and think, “Excuse me while I whip this out,” (thanks, “Blazing Saddles”) and will whip out my phone to set Merlin to the task of identifying the multitude of bird calls. In the year 2013 (I heard the 1969 song “In The Year 2525” by Zager and Evans as I wrote that) I was living in what I called my loft, at the corner of Julian Street and Bolton Avenue. My land-person gave me permission to put up a bird feeder that was visited by a startling number of bird species. One day while I was standing in the back yard, I heard an unfamiliar cry. I looked up to see a small bird; its uplifted tail signified “wren” to me, but that was the first time that I had seen and heard the cry of a Winter Wren. I’m not sure how I managed to track down the bird’s call, as I had yet to meet Wes Homoya, the ornithologist who would become my friend. (See “Hummingbird Down,” The Weekly View, July 3rd, 2019.) But the birds in the bushes and the trees around my house — which is two blocks North of Ellenberger Park — are twittering up a spring storm.
When I am ambling through the neighborhood, I can hear the birds in the trees, and I know the Robin, the Northern Cardinal and of course, the House Sparrows. At the corner of East 10th Street and North Emerson Avenue, the trees are alive with the sounds of bird music. At this time of the year, with the birds vocalizing, I think of a little poem called “Spring Birds” that I wrote three years ago: “Busy birds bringing / Small bits of trash and tiny / Twigs. Boot-knocking, soon?”
And yes: Soon, in the trees and bushes and under the eaves of the houses, nests will grow and those busy birds, singing and winging and fluttering together in the act of procreation, will be tending to eggs, which will hatch and then I will hear the higher-pitched cries of baby birds as they struggle to exit their shells and beg for sustenance. And I will walk the two blocks south on Hawthorne Lane to Ellenberger Park, where I will listen to the bird songs of our lives.
cjon3acd@att.net