male brown-headed cowbird looking slightly annoyed

In which I am elected an honorary cowbird

Observances
male brown-headed cowbird looking slightly annoyed
Photo by AditiStargazer licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

For the past two weeks I’ve been seeing a pair of cowbirds at the feeder hanging outside my studio window — quite often, because there’s no mistaking their song, and when I hear it I always stop work to watch them. They’re thieves and bullies, but they’re pretty, and if I’ve eaten eggs for breakfast, who am I to judge, anyhow?

This morning the male was here alone and, for the first time, noticed me through the window. I keep the blinds down but slatted open, partly to control the light but also to disguise my movements from the birds who would be, if the window were open, within arm’s reach (as well as to keep them from flying into the glass). Unless I move suddenly, the birds never seem to see me, even when they’re standing on the stone window ledge.

But this cowbird started watching me through the window, quite intently, bobbing his head, trying to get a better look through the slats into the comparatively dim light of the studio. So I whistled at him — not his own song, which I can’t mimic, but a sort of “yoo-hoo” mixed with a rising glissando to get his attention. He watched me awhile longer, then whistled back and displayed: stretched out his neck, puffed his chest, and spread his wings. I tapped on the window lightly, and he backed off but didn’t fly away, and in half a minute he was back. I waved and whistled, and he sang and displayed again. We kept this up for several minutes, and then he left.

According to the Audubon Society, he thinks I’m a rival, not a potential mate: female cowbirds prefer less dramatic displays. But he didn’t seem overly concerned. Hopefully he’ll be back. He’s got mettle, that one.

Postscript, three days later

The next morning the cowbird was back — with two other males. What are three males doing hanging around together during breeding season? My friend was at the window, looking in, bobbing his head, while the other two checked out the feeder. The bird brought his posse. Well, I didn’t want a rumble. I just watched quietly and let him have the window ledge.

This morning he checked on me once, alone and silent, and then came back with his girlfriend. While she ate he sang from the iron bracket that holds it, keeping watch, and (I assume) making sure I knew that little brown job was his girl. Now he’s back on the ledge chirping and displaying at me again, trying to figure out if he’s won.

Who needs the internet with all this going on?

27. The transformation of rains

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

Spring, and warmth, and the sun shone for days with bewitching clarity. Trees offered tender leaves like babies’ palms. Flowers unfurled their love to bumblebees. And clouds of pollen covered all and every thing, infinite infinitesimal golden grains like so many sins choking the earth’s promise. Now the rain that fell last month as desperate cold has come again in peace to washed away the amber stain, and the wet green resonates in the crackling air. The spring transforms the rains, and the rain transforms the season.

26. The redbud

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

The redbud lurks all year at the edge of the woods, quiet and unassuming. He wakes with the dawn, puts on his business foliage, kisses his wife the dogwood goodbye, heads off to his office in the understory and shades the brambles in a comfortable deep green. He keeps to himself. He doesn’t make any trouble. Then once a year in spring he leaps forth possessed like a prophet from the roadside, shrieking magenta jubilation to all who will listen. He mocks the elegance of cherries, shouts down buntings and cardinals, drowns the murmur of violets. His words fall like rain upon the grass and are forgotten, and reluctantly he settles into another year. He goes again about his business, a model citizen of the woods. Biding his time.

25. Minor imperfections

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

For a note one quarter step flat and an entrance half a beat too early. For a missed step, a bruised elbow, one wheel parked on the line. For a lock of hair three shades lighter than its neighbors. For the lone golden raisin in the box. For one leg shorter than the other by the thickness of a wingtip’s sole. Be ye perfect; but only God or a machine can, and it is reassuring just now to be speaking to neither. Just don’t get carried away.

24. Unintended shelter

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

For unintended shelter. The winter’s assaults of ice tore twigs from branches, branches from trees, trees from the earth, and some of us who could not abide the chaos chopped and raked the refuse into piles. Some of us who cannot abide the chaos even raked and piled would no doubt have burned it, had the tinder been drier and less resinous. Instead the quick-sawn trunks and browning needles sit like a Christmas massacre, sinking imperceptibly into the woods and into memory. Sinking, that is, into our memory, and rising into the life of others. Today a cardinal perched atop a storm-pile, a sienna slash of straw in her mouth. When her mate returned they disappeared into the brush and danced, as it seemed from where I stood — danced for hope or for joy, danced their own continuing. Danced the spring into existence in a bed of winter’s trash.

23. The changeability of trees

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

For the changeability of trees. Some days I walk deep into the woods, up strenuous hillsides where the trees are ancient — ancient, I mean, by the measure of my own days, and older than the memory of the oldest people I ever loved. Oaks that sprang from acorns fallen into the same earth but a different world, now grown unembraceably broad, that have stood continuous to shade the paths of a myriad changeable passing lives. Today I am in a different place, small and fenced, where also there are trees, small and carefully arranged. But I remember long ago here other trees, tall enough to shade a hasty lunch or passing thought and not by nature purple in the springtime. I remember myself here, shaded, and with that boy seem to have been continuous. But the trees have proven changeable, and it is I who feel ancient in their presence.

22. The silence of books

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

For the silence of books. I am sitting at a desk atop two million volumes. A mountain of knowledge I could not climb, that no one could climb in a dozen lives. (I took the elevator.) Two million volumes bound in faded hues, standing silent and straight-spined between their assigned companions, volunteering nothing. Numbered, shelved, neatly stacked and nearly unread. A comfortable ordering of knowledge unknown. I could choose one at random, let it open where it may, let my eye fall on a sentence: Fifi drew off and surveyed her work sympathetically yet professionally.1 Who is Fifi? Who knows? A scrap of paper marks the thirty-seventh page; the last page bears a penciled list of vocabulary words (eulogies, decadent, pristine, corollary) and a quick sum. But the date sheet is blank. I return the book to its place and myself to my desk. Through a window, far below, the sun finds sharply angled paths where people walk, hands in their pockets, heads in their thoughts, alone. Volunteering nothing.

  1. Henry Sydnor Harrison, Queed: A Novel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911). ↵

21. The last freeze of winter

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

For what one hopes is the last freeze of winter. At dawn the air still crackles wickedly, but its echoes fade with the night, and as the sun clears the spiderweb treetops the bite of morning dulls into a muddy coolness that grows more distant by the hour. The day takes command so pompous and full of itself that you begin to think winter this time has truly gone. The thought comes oddly bittersweet, as if an annoying and detested roommate has finally moved out, one whose departure you longed for, prayed for, crossed off each calendar day until and beyond his promised leaving, and now in the reverberation of the closing door you fear you may miss him after all. But in the silence of his absence you hear the birds singing, and a little breeze ruffles the grass, and you find you have forgotten him already. You hope, this time, for good.

20. The uninvited squirrel

Forty ThanksgivingsObservances

For the uninvited squirrel. Lithe as an acrobat, quiet as a leaf, round-bellied as a stone Buddha, he arrives in a distraction and is gone as quickly as starlight. No one announced him, but there he is at the buffet, bullying your guests and scarfing up the canapés. The hodgepodge hungry wait their turn while he gorges on prosciutto and melon. Turning to the meatballs he catches your eye and freezes. But what are you going to do? He’s so damn cute. Call the waiter: he’ll bring more.