Meet the Bird Diva...

So true…I laughed so hard I cried.

A Field Guide to Bird Shadows: Eastern Region

Easily Identifiable Bird Shadows

Although in a previous incarnation the vast majority of telephone calls I received came from friends and family at some point in the space/time continuum I started fielding calls primarily from complete strangers chomping at the bit and all but beseeching me to identify a bird they saw or, most recently, a bird they didn’t see.

“Hi I’m a friend of a neighbor of yours who says you won’t know him but who saw you give a lecture about birds and chromosomes and radioactive isotopes or something and knows people call you all the time and you always know what bird they’re trying to describe and if you’re not busy or eating dinner or anything I wonder could you help me identify these birds that I think come into my yard all the time but I never see them.”

“Sure,” I said, genuinely curious about what sort of information she would give me to work with.

“Well I mean I said I never see them but I see their shadows all the time because of where they always seem to go in the yard and always fly off in the same direction over the top of my house but between the sun and the white side of my neighbor’s house in the morning most of the year even after we turn back the clocks for a month or maybe more.”

I asked her how many birds she thought visited her yard.

“Oh I don’t know two or three or maybe six or eight judging by their shadows which look most like silhouettes around Christmas when the sun comes up real late and it’s real cold and clear and the shadows of the birds sort of roll up the side of the house and onto the roof when it’s covered with snow.”

Suspecting the answer in advance I asked her if she ever heard the birds.

“Oh no I don’t think so I hear all kinds of birds all the time singing in my yard or screaming in the trees or croaking like the huge ravens that fly by and of course the chickadees and the nuthatches and I hear the geese flying overhead they even wake me up sometimes in the middle of the night but I’m pretty sure I never heard these birds because I never hear anything when I see their shadows and I always stop whatever I’m doing or saying so I can listen in case one of them sings or calls or whatever and by the way their shadows sometimes look like long and thin like maybe a bunch of parrots escaped from some pet store or some bird collector or whatever.”

I asked her if she felt absolutely certain she never heard the birds make any noise.

“Oh yeah definitely I never heard them sing or call and I wanted to ask you if there are any birds around here in this part of the Adirondacks that adapted to the mountains by singing and calling so low they drown themselves out with their own wing noises and maybe only sing when they take off from the ground which is where I know they go when they come here because I can’t see that part of the yard from the kitchen window which looks out at the feeders but not the ground real close  to the house where I have a small garden nothing elaborate or anything.”

I asked her what kind of noise the birds made when they took off.

“Oh a real loud noise unbelievable really like a bunch of squeaky fans that could use some oil starting up all at once and squeaking all together real loud and real high-pitched reminds me of  a bunch of kids playing with a bunch of squeeze toys so much and so loud you can’t hear yourself thinking because the noise started up so sudden it startled you and you react with a start maybe that’s why I never hear them maybe I get deaf when something stuns me like that but then again I always hear their wings.”

I asked her if she had a field guide to the birds.

“Oh yeah the National Geographic beautiful book covers the whole country but it doesn’t really fit in a pocket like the old Peterson I have it’s so old it’s all in black and white and doesn’t include all the birds in the east because I used to live in California before I got married and moved to Vermont with this organic guy who made me do yoga I left him the day before our first anniversary and moved to Lake Placid never went back to Vermont these past twenty years never will.”

I asked her to look in the index for mourning dove.

“Oh wow I thought it was morning like a.m. get up and have coffee and get dressed ready for work not mourning like grieving for a loved one lost or a really good person gone why do they call them that I see them all the time around here sitting side by side on the power lines I even see them necking once in a while in the spring I guess but I never heard them singing do they call them mourning because of some birdy minute of silence that lasts their whole life or something.”

I told her the name comes from their haunting, sorrowful coo.

“Yeah and that jerk from Vermont told me that sound came from owls crying because the sun hadn’t set yet or it just came up and they made different sounds in the dark I don’t know what the heck I saw in that guy with his veggie burgers and Birkenstocks manure for the garden I never kissed another guy with a beard and never will or even a mustache and hey thanks a lot I mean you really solved a riddle for me I’ll think about you every time I hear squeaky wings and owls crying.”

I told her she was very welcome, smoothed my mustache down with my thumb and middle finger, felt my lips click in a smile.

                 John Thaxton wrties the “Birdwatch” column for Adirondack Explorer

>A special thank you to my friend Ken who leads bird walks with me at the Missisquoi National Refuge for sending me this link. Really, I laughed so hard I cried.<