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Category: animals

An Antidote

An Antidote

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A humid morning on the deck, fan whirring, heat still tempered by some faint remnant of nighttime cool. I watch the birds, the tiny wrens whose songs took me so long to identify because their sound was so much larger than them. The hummingbirds who have returned after an early summer hiatus. A male cardinal, his plumage bright red against the green.

How soothing it is to sit here as the birds flit and flutter in front of me. They’re an antidote to the hard times and the bad news. A way to be present in the moment.

In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan writes that the birds she watches heighten her “awareness that life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images, there for pondering…”

For me, today, they do that … and more.

Their World

Their World

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The parakeets have moved to a new room of the house, what I think of as the morning room. It’s full of sunshine at this time of the day and the rays are enlivening the birdies, who are flapping and fluttering around their aviary cage.

Soon they catch their breath and perch side by side, looking out the window. What do they see? Not just the grass and trees and raggedy azaleas that I glimpse. It’s a landscape pulsing with colors invisible to the human eye; they can perceive ultraviolet light, too.

Having them here, in this room and this house, is a constant reminder of the “immense world” we inhabit, a term I borrow from a book by Ed Yong. It’s a book I’ve read recently and am only mentioning in this post — I hope to explore it more fully in another.

For now, suffice it to say that the parakeets sense their own slice of reality just as we humans sense ours. Having a better idea of theirs makes mine that much richer.

Bullfrog Morning

Bullfrog Morning

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The bullfrogs were happy this morning. They bellowed beneath bridges, sang from the banks of reedy ponds. I didn’t see them, but I could imagine their slick skin, their bulging eyes, their camouflage coloring. They might be hard to spot, but their sounds give them away.

They were celebrating the moisture and the damp, joining their voices in thanksgiving, though they may not see it that way. No doubt mating is on their minds.

I’m glad I heard them, happy their voices rose over the barking dogs and the swim meet bullhorn. It’s good to know they’re hopping and croaking. It’s good to know they’re alive.

(A bullfrog birthplace? We often see tadpoles here.)

A Nursery

A Nursery

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The fence that was built to keep out the deer apparently provided a safe delivery spot for one doe. Yesterday, this little guy appeared in our garden. We knew enough to leave him alone; his mother would be back for him soon. She must have come for him after dark because there was no sign of him in the morning.

It’s been a strange year for the garden, producing more animals (fawns, cardinals, ants) than flowers. I’m writing it off to lack of deer-proofing and unseasonably damp weather.

What it reminds me of, though, is that nothing is promised to us. April showers don’t always bring May flowers. It’s something we know, but tend to forget — until life provides the proof. Now the garden is a nursery … in more ways than one.

Party Animals

Party Animals

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We have to keep a close eye on our parakeets. Any excuse for a party. This weekend there were two birthdays, so they went to town.

They can’t eat cake, and though they are extremely musical, have not yet managed to warble “Happy Birthday to you!”

But boy can they fly around, pull toys apart, and make a mess. It’s tempting to put them in time out … but they already live in a cage, so what to do?

Just realize that birds will be birds, crank up “Celebration” … and let the good times roll!

(The parakeet’s cage after a night of hard partying.)

Local Lizard

Local Lizard

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Yesterday, while writing in my “summer place,” a corner of the glass-topped table on the desk, I spied a lizard skittering along the boards. Our corner of Fairfax County is full of wildlife. I routinely see fox and deer, the cries of hawks and pileated woodpeckers fill the skies, and a few weeks ago I saw a wild turkey slowly crossing the main street of our neighborhood, on his way from one patch of woods to another.

But lizards have been in short supply. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one here before.

This little guy brought to mind the subtropical world of southern Florida, where lizards are king. I’ve spent many hours watching their tiny movements, their habit of bowing up and down, as if they’re doing tiny pushups. I bet there’s a scientific term and explanation for this, but I’m too lazy to look it up now.

What I can say is that I will be on the lookout for this fellow. Maybe he will become hawk food … but I hope not. I’d like to see him again. He brings with him a whiff of the faraway.

Left Behind

Left Behind

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I found the little guy on the deck yesterday, a fledgling that didn’t make it, a pile of bones and feathers and a faint blush of pink that promised the bright hues of a male cardinal.

I work in an upstairs office with two big windows overlooking the backyard. Sometimes there’s a thump when a bird hits the glass or screen, but usually it flies off and survives. Was this bird one that didn’t? Or did it starve? Unlikely given the bounty of seed so close at hand with our feeder, though juveniles can be crowded out there.

Nights have been cold lately. Could this wee creature have frozen in the chill? The pruned azalea offers less shelter than it did pre-shearing. Whatever took him, I hope it was quick and painless. Birds belong in the air and trees, full of breath and life.

(Maybe all that little bird needed was a house like this.)

Another Chance

Another Chance

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Yesterday I was shocked to learn not just of the firings at Health and Human Services — we had been expecting them — but of how they were executed. Whole departments eliminated. Civil servants waiting in line for hours only to learn as they reached the door that they had been let go. This is more than a “reduction in force.” This is intimidation. This is meanness and cruelty.

I woke up this morning thinking of the institutional knowledge that is being lost, of the kind of country we’re creating with these careless and corrosive decisions. What do I do with this angst and anger? I could protest, of course — and I may. But would it help? The people who can make a difference stand silent and impotent.

It’s not yet light outside, but I hear the first birds singing. I learned recently from Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles that 75 percent of songbirds die before they’re a year old. They starve or fall prey to a hungry hawk. But the ones who survive wake up singing. “Each day is a chance to survive,” Tan writes.

I look out the window. It’s still too dark to see the birds, but I can hear them. I know they’re perching in the trees, waiting for the light. For them, today is another chance to survive. And for us, too.

(A mountain bluebird in southern Colorado, 2019)

Riding the Elephant

Riding the Elephant

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Today I’m thinking about the two minds with which most of us navigate the world. One of them is rational and cool; it checks facts and weighs options. The other is emotional and warm-blooded; facts slip through its fingers. There are different ways of describing these entities: reasoning and intuition, higher brain and lower brain, the elephant and the rider.

It’s the last one that sticks in my mind. I first learned about the elephant and rider in Jonathan Haidt’s The RIghteous Mind, which did more to explain our political polarization than any book I’ve read.

Yesterday, I was riding the elephant. I climbed aboard midday and didn’t dismount for several hours. It’s tempting now to second-guess every action I took during that fraught time, but I will try to avoid that trap. I’ll focus instead on the perils of elephant riding. Today, I promise to keep my feet on the ground.

(Photo: A bull elephant in Kruger National Park. Rob Hooft, Wikimedia Commons)

The Birds Beyond

The Birds Beyond

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I’d heard about Birdcast before, the Cornell Lab’s forecast of bird migration activity, but last night I was reminded of it when reading Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald.

Macdonald parks herself atop the Empire State Building with a Cornell Labs expert and a fine pair of binoculars and watches as three black-crowned night herons fly 300 feet above the 1,250-foot observation deck.

“I feel less like a naturalist here and more like an amateur astronomer waiting for a meteor shower,” Macdonald writes. As she became accustomed to focusing her binoculars on the ether, birds that would have been invisible to the naked eye flew into view. “For every larger bird I see, thirty or more songbirds pass over. … They resemble stars, embers, slow tracer fire.”

Macdonald’s expedition was in early May, during a prime migration period. But reading about it reminds me of all that I miss, everyday.

“Up here we’ll be able to see only a fraction of what is moving past us: even the tallest buildings dip into only the shallows of the sky,” Macdonald writes. Only the shallows, yet high enough to glimpse beyond them.