MYSTERY OF THE DISAPPEARING BIRDS

Bird feeder at Fairbanks home

In my last blog, I wrote about birds disappearing from our yard and surrounding woods and wondered if their food had been poisoned by pesticides or herbicides, or if they had migrated early, or did they just not like the birdbath we'd filled with reverse osmosis water. They may not have liked the appearance of our new bird feeder, which resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Yesterday afternoon we looked out the living room window at the bird feeder and, voila, we discovered an ominous reason for the sudden absence of birdlife (except for a few marauding crows). Atop the new bird feeder, wings folded neatly and looking like a polite statue of itself, was a Merlin falcon whose chief diet consists of small birds — sparrows, wrens, nuthatches, and titmice that once flocked to our yard, but which must have become prey for this large bird.

I’ve read that Merlins watch for prey from a perch, and what better perch than our tall bird feeder? However, he catches this prey in mid-air, flying at race track speed, and the poor smaller bird dies from sudden attack. What do raptors do with feathers and bill?

We watched him for a half hour or so until he flew into the woods where he’d probably found an abandoned crow’s nest, 10 - 50 feet above the ground. I was afraid to track him, having heard the story about a hawk attacking a friend when she walked down to her mailbox to get a better view of the bird.

We heard no bird calls as we watched, but later I thought I heard a loud cackle that this raptor often makes. The Merlin could probably team up with crows to make a raucous sonata, but crows regard themselves as creatures superior to most birds and mostly frequent the front yard where they chase squirrels into the tall hemlock. They seem to prefer food in freshly mown grass, rather than smaller birds.

In my readings, I discovered that Merlins also enjoy a good meal of snakes, rats, and bats so they couldn’t be all bad. However, I confess that I prefer the small bird population we'd enjoyed watching splash in the birdbath, and I’m considering dismantling the Merlin’s perch, the leaning bird feeder. Anyway, due to heavy rains, the birdseed has sprouted!

A further negative report about the Merlin: He’s become a threat to an endangered species of Plovers nesting around the Great Lakes. Also, he feeds upon my favorite insects, dragonflies. A statue of this favored insect was given to me by a deceased, cherished friend and sits on a table overlooking the backyard. I’m thinking of moving it away from the window in case Merlin decides to make a crash landing against the sometimes-cloudy panes while we’re away this winter.

Photography by Victoria I. Sullivan

MORE BIRDS (#3)

I’ve been in Louisiana for a week now, and I miss the sight of birds dipping in the bird bath in the front yard at Sewanee, Tennessee where I live part of the year. The bird bath in the backyard here in New Iberia has been upended because mosquitoes were laying eggs in the water.

Shortly before I left Sewanee, we experienced a crucifixion of birds, a bird kill that occurred when more than 130 birds died after flying into the Sewanee War Memorial Cross and surrounding trees. A cold front moved through the area during that night, and nocturnal birds, flying lower than usual, were attracted to and became disoriented by the lights on the cross. Investigators said that migrating birds use earth’s magnetic field to help them navigate, and artificial light confuses them. The result was the massive bird kill.

Kevin Cummings, staff writer at The Messenger (Sewanee’s “newspaper of note”), reported that after the birds died, Sewanee’s Plant Services changed the two lights at the cross, lowering the 2,000 watt bulbs to 400 watt bulbs. Cummings also reported that in the past, bird deaths had occurred on foggy nights, but the number of deaths hadn’t exceeded six or seven. In nearby Beersheba, forty-five minutes away at the Assembly United Methodist retreat center, 80 birds died the same night as the bird kill at the Sewanee cross. Migrating birds, if they’re flying low, are also drawn to brightly-lit windows of homes, but no mention was made of bird kills at residences.

As I write, I see Dr. Sullivan, our bird bath tender, turning over the bowl of the upended bird bath after she has filled a large red pot with purified water to carry to the bath in anticipation of our feathered friends. However, a huge pile of ants, uncovered and now beside the bowl in the barren yard, may discourage bird visitors; it’s amazing how quickly nature takes over when house and yard are vacated for six months of a year. I expect the crows to return as they seem to know when I arrive and camp out in the trees next door, usually to bring me messages of good will. They were present at my leave taking from Sewanee, and I’m foolish enough, or superstitious enough, to think they follow me. Blue jays also hover around the house here; one year, a pet jay arrived and sat for months on a window sill, looking in and sometimes tapping on the window pane to attract attention. Both species think that I can interpret their songs and tapping, but I only sense their good will.

One book of my poetry entitled Soaring contains several crow poems; this snippet entitled “More Crow Calls:”

Hearing a party of crows

almost daily now,

black warriors raucous in tree tops,

we become them, seeking seed

lodged in yellow grass,

churlish crows squeaking combat

while trying to imitate doves,

delighting the soul like no other bird.

Ravens jeer at open territory,

lift us above downdrafts

to sit in the arches of oaks…

laugh at the wind.

We bird watch,

birds watch us.

Vigilant crows

watch for their day to rule,

seeing straight through to within:

the evolution of human soaring.

How we claim ascent,

tree top, free fall

while sitting at a table,

lying in bed

waking before daybreak,

wings beating wildly.

P.S. A mockingbird just landed on the empty pedestal.

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING CROWS

A mad crow as depicted by Diane Moore

In both places that I live, Sewanee, Tennessee and New Iberia Louisiana, I’ve always enjoyed the company of crows – those black, glossy bodies flapping, then gliding across the sky, landing on trees in my yards. They usually recognize me, and lately I’ve missed their strident conversations when I walk outdoors. I’ve begun to wonder if the felling of the pines in my front yard had anything to do with their disappearance. Or they could have become ill with West Nile Virus since the mosquitoes in my neighborhood have been breeding apace. Whatever the reason, I strain to hear their familiar caws and hear only a few cardinals singing “cheer, cheer, cheer” near the backyard coulee.

I’ve read that crows have real family values. Their offspring stick around to help with younger siblings, often feed Mama Crow and the siblings, and defend their home territory against invaders. Families can include step-parents, nephews, brothers, and even orphaned crows, and in New York some crow roosts boasting as many as a million birds disappear in March when breeding season begins.

Since breeding season hasn’t begun, I don’t know why my crow families have disappeared, but I suspect that their absence has something to do with the murder of the three large pine trees, which had often been their perches. The sound of those trees falling was like a bomb dropping on the street and frightened several neighbors who came out of their houses to see if we’d been victims of an ISIS attack. Usually, the crows had responded to the whisking sound of my broom as I swept off the leaf-strewn patio and drive — a futile exercise that invited their raucous laughter.

I’m including in this blog a new crow poem from a book of poetry that I’m working on entitled Street Sketches — one that will have a cover photograph of a glass piece based on one of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings and rendered by the master glass artist, Karen Bourque, of Church Point, Louisiana.

RETURN TO CROW LANE

They circled overhead

like buzzards on the desert

waiting for us to tip the ladder

as we cleared overflowing gutters,

streets they perceived to be theirs,

landing fields closest to the empty house,

streaked windows they had peered in

and seen unlit lamps.

Was I only deceiving myself

about the intent of dark birds

others feel are dressed in misfortune,

thinking they’re heavenly agents,

creatures that speak in parable

strutting in the garden

and bringing messages of good will

directly from the angels?

When they left their roost in a dead pine

and soared into the sky

it was laden with the raucous noise

of a new language they had created

because we had gone away

leaving their streets untended,

the defiant sound of prophecies

we struggled to interpret.

  

FROM THE FRONT PORCH

It's the time of the pause between books I've been writing—a time when I'm reviewing the work of ants, spiders, birds, plants, and the lime green trees in the wood beyond my front porch. I can't call it the time of idleness because I have a condition that is known as "racing mind," and contemplative or centering prayer is difficult for me unless I have some sort of mantra buzzing in my brain.

I console myself that the transcendentalist Thoreau observed, read, listened to the sounds of nature, built a cabin, planted a garden, and wrote about all of this during his two years of communing with nature in the Concord woods. As far as I know, he didn't assume a lotus position and just ponder or practice nothingness.

Right now, the crows overhead are jeering at me, as they do every time I come out on the porch. I've read that they recognize faces and voices, and we keep up a lively conversation above the sound of construction work going on near my driveway. One of them waddled over to my steps the other day and cocked his yellow eye at me when I recited the first poem I learned at age four while my mother read aloud from A Child's Garden of Verse: "A birdie with a yellow bill/hopped upon my window sill..." The crow quickly exited the yard at the sound of rhyming verse since he's more accustomed to readings of my free verse, and he flew away when I continued to recite the rhyme in a sing-song voice.

Moments later, my nose picked up the scent of a skunk, a creature more equipped for nocturnal visits, and I shuddered, remembering the family that colonized the insulation underneath our cottage two years ago—and ripped it into pieces for a nesting place to raise babies. Three skunk catchers later and $1,000 poorer, we rid ourselves of the offending visitors. I hope the scent this morning doesn't indicate there's a scouting expedition nearby.

We've had rain in sporadic bursts for weeks, and the snails are out. A large one was encamped by the French doors leading into our living room, and I was rude enough to interrupt his slumber, brushing him into the yard. When I was a child, a neighbor bully was fond of sprinkling salt on snail bodies when they emerged from their shells and would watch them turn into "butter," as he called it. It was a gruesome sight, and I've never bothered to find out why this chemical reaction occurred as it was a clear violation of nature.

Tiny bright orange toadstools have appeared in the bed of fern, varicolored hosta, a sickly lemon balm plant, and a stunted rosebush by the steps, the latter two preferring more sunlight than they're getting under the shade of the white oaks. The toadstools look like the fairy footstools my mother painted in her renderings of fantastical creatures that she imagined populated the piney woods near Franklinton, Louisiana. I expected a gnome with a pointed hat to appear on the spot as she always painted a gnome standing alongside huge mushrooms, a palette in hand and a large green frog perched in the foreground, observing the magical creature at work.

Those who want to read expert observations on the natural world should get a copy of The Unseen Forest: A Year's Watch of Nature by David Haskell, or read his blog entitled "Ramble." He has received national awards for his wonderful writings about a square meter of space in the woods where he spent a year observing nature at work. 

I'm not a trained naturalist, but I do like my observation post on the front porch here at Sewanee and find that it's a great way to reclaim my writing urges on a day that could have been a time for just being a good for nothing southerner doing some serious porch sitting.

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan