On a relatively cool morning, I rose early and, assuming my “Charlie’s Angels” stance, did my yoga-like stretches in preparation for my walk on the Pennsy Trail. I try to do this daily, provided that the body is willing and the creek has not overflowed its banks. This day was perfect, the product of a moderate night and an overcast morning. I headed for the Pennsy Trail, the first leg of my loop toward the gas station/convenient store for my daily purchase of another corporation’s publication. But nothing that I read is more enjoyable than the shenanigans on the trail.
The birds of the early morning contribute chips, cheeps and cheer-cheers to my walk toward the trail, and the big German Shepherd that does not bark at me is not in the yard. I hear a new call from a bird, and stand still, looking into the trees to find it, something I do often, to little effect: I can see nothing but leaves. But the birds are aggressively amorous, and I interrupt two robins attempting to … robin.
I pass “the pasture,” where the horse is not, but where a great gang of big, black chickens struts among some ducks, ignoring the ducks’ querulous quacks. Not for the first time, this city boy marvels at the size of these chickens, for I never knew that they grew so large. And I was sore afraid. But ahead, on a lawn that abuts the trail, I see a small, dark bird in the grass. It has a longer tail than does the more common dark birds I see — which may be European starlings — and I recognize it, and greet it: “Well, hello, brown-headed cowbird.” Farther down the trail, I try to remember the street that had once set free two little ShihTs … uh, Shih Tzus, who had demonstrated their power by charging me, yapping, and pulling up to circle me, yapping. They do not appear, but a man does, dismounting his bike and waving a camera with a long lens attached. A frisson of jealousy briefly stings me, but the man engages me in conversation, saying that he planned to take photos of the graduating seniors of Irvington Preparatory Academy, who will soon be marching onto the trail. He also tells me of the birds he sees along the trail: red-shouldered hawks, (which are bigger than another kind of hawk) and some other birds, whose names I cannot recall, for I was distracted by a nuthatch climbing a telephone pole while he spoke. He did say that he has seen the elusive pileated woodpecker on the trail, and I remembered one day last year, when I watched a red-bellied woodpecker, a great nut in its beak, climb a dead tree and drop the nut into a hollow. Before I moved on, I identified the call of the red-bellied woodpecker for the man.
On this early morning as I worked my way east, I saw two school-aged boys, dressed in red polos and tan pants, curl off the trail and North onto Arlington. No runners trotted, and no bikers called out, “Left,” as they passed me. A man cycled in the opposite direction, calling out “Good morning,” and two women also worked westward, and greeted me pleasantly. And the birds sang in the trees, invisible to my weak eyes, but joyful to my ears as they sought mates for the propagation of their species. And even above the winter-bombed streets, the birds flew to and from the trail, and stuck poses, dark against the clouds.
And climbed under the eaves of houses, for shenanigans