A Disguising of Birds

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

                                                                                                                              - Robert Lynd      

“What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.”

                                                                                                                - Thomas Bailey Aldrich  

My place provides me with a plethora of birds. And throughout the year, I collect feathers on my walks. Or my husband brings me gifts of feathers that he and the dog have discovered on their walks. The feathers live in a pile of colour on a table in my studio. The feathers are like messages left in secret places where I am meant to stumble upon them.

In the spring downy woodpeckers and flickers hammer their silly heads on our chimney, making a sound that reverberates throughout the house for all the world like it is coming down about our ears. A group of flickers is called a ‘guttering’. Appropriate, since the metal gutters are also an attraction to them. This year they graced us with a brood of four to five awkward, raucous, flapping chicks. A tall, dead tree in the very back has become the site of tutoring that, next year, will progress to the chimney.

In the summer great flocks of tiny bush tits descend habitually on a bush in our front yard, that we have never been able to identify. The bush has a strange, alien habit (but that’s a story for another time). The bush tits are so very tiny, like little fairy birds. They twitter constantly as they swarm like bees over the bush. The twittering sounds like baby breaths through tiny chimes. I’ve come across, once or twice, their strange hanging nests made of moss and spider webs. What else but a fairy-blessed creature would make nests out of spider webs.

Nightly, in numbers more copious than the bush tits, crows crowd in the evening skies in waves and waves of discordant cacophony. They are going to trees to roost for the night, cuddled bum to beak along branches and briar.  They build incredibly messy nests and chase the song birds from the neighborhood, jealous of their melodic voices compared to their own hoarse and jangling racket. But I love crows. I admire their temerity.

Now is the time of year when the Canada geese change their pattern. Throughout the summer we rarely hear them, but now that it is approaching autumn, they are flying over our roof – so low you can see their webbed, black feet tucked up under their bodies. My place is on the flight path between the river and the train yard. Now that the food is getting scarcer at the river, they fly over us early in the morning to feast on the grain at the train yard throughout the day. In the evening they fly back the other direction to sleep on the shores of the river.  They fly in separate families, undulations one after another. I have come to hear that each family has a different honking sound, much like families of whales in the sea.

But, ultimately, my place graces me with the sweetest of birds – the mourning dove. It’s gentle call of  cooooOOOOO-woo-woo-woo  greets me in the quiet of the morning and calls softly in the night. It is like a solemn hymn. I found several of their nests fallen to the ground this summer. They are the flimsiest and most delicate nests I have seen, shallow, soft bowls made of pine needles and grass stems. Even more delicate than that of the bush tit. A group of mourning doves is called a dule – which means pitying. Perhaps I love them best because pity, though sorrowful, is also merciful. We could all do with more mercy in our lives.