A BIT OF BIRDING

Bird Bath in Our Yard, Sewanee

Instead of singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” this morning, I think there should be a new refrain: “Where Have All the Birds Gone?” For the past several days, I haven’t seen any of our usual visitors to the bird bath, even after we cleaned the bath and filled it with reverse osmosis water (water that contains no pesticide, herbicide, or arsenic and which the birds usually love). When I step outside, I hear only one faint “cheep” coming from the vicinity of the thrasher habitat by the drive. The wooden fence on which they love to perch is woefully empty. Of course, the weather has been sweltering for The Mountain, but warm temps haven’t altered their behavior during the eleven summers we’ve been living here at Sewanee. We suspect that deadly pesticides are being used on the campus vegetation and have caused the demise of our lovely friends but were told otherwise the other day. However…

Perhaps we should do what a former friend of ours did while she resided in New Iberia years ago. She captured two well-known birds and caged them — a mockingbird and a blue jay, two birds that she claimed could sing louder than any outdoor members of their flock. Emily, who was a male mocking bird, lived in the kitchen of Sally’s home and serenaded visitors with an enthusiastic variety of notes, often repetitive ones, interspersed with imitations of the blue jay that resided in her bedroom. We appreciated Sally’s enthusiasm for the caged birds that seemed not to mind being eccentric, not “resting upon the air, subduing it, surpassing it, are the air,” as John Ruskin once wrote about our feathered friends.

Sally developed a new hatching project during the time that she housed the caged birds. A friend brought her three round eggs about six inches in diameter, weighing from two to three pounds apiece and asked her to incubate them for hatching. They weren’t blue jays or mockingbirds and were an unusual species to have been born in old Louisiana — ostriches. Now, an ostrich egg hatches within 40 days. The mama ostrich sits on them all day while the papa sits up nights keeping them warm. If the egg doesn’t have a mama or a papa, an incubator is a good stand-in. Sally, a scientist who researched mammals, had access to an incubator in a lab that kept the eggs at 98.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and Sally turned them daily.

The eggs, when hatched, were to be returned to the owner who'd launched Sally in this hatching project. But we worried a lot about their loyalties. When birds hatch, they go through the process of imprinting. The person around when the birds break through into the world and who handles them at birth becomes their natural caretaker.

Now Sally’s blue jay talked to her every morning, and her mockingbird delighted her with a song in the evening, but somehow we couldn’t visualize the long-necked ostrich, which can take 15-foot steps at 40 miles per hour, whizzing through Sally’s household without causing some disruption. We submitted the advice to Sally that on the 40th day, she should stick her hands in her pockets, call in a handler and vamoose in 15-foot steps at 40 miles per hour to escape imprinting the newly born. 

Flamingos in Chinese exhibit, Huntsville Botanical Garden

The last time I visited Sally’s home, I didn’t see any evidences of baby ostriches and actually, the caged birds had been liberated. I was glad that they’d been set free. Meanwhile, I’ll keep watching the bird baths and sit on the porch listening for the cries of beloved birds. I hope that they’ll want a bath soon, or at least they’ll come and sit on the fence surrounding my backyard like they usually do. However, if they don’t show up soon, I’m going into the leaseholder’s office and threaten to bring over one of the irascible emus I often see in a yard in the Cowan valley and loose it from captivity. Talk about a commotion, as we Cajuns say!!

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

BIRDS, CHAPTER 2

A few days ago, I wrote a blog about a variety of birds splashing in clean water that my friend, Dr. Victoria Sullivan, had put in the bird bath in the front yard. She kept filling the bath with water from the reverse osmosis filtered water tap in the kitchen, but yesterday she decided to fill the bath via the garden hose as the process for filling was so much easier. But the result wasn’t the same! To our surprise, no birds appeared for their morning bath. We waited, checking hourly for the appearance of our feathered friends. By afternoon, we decided to change the bath, filling it with purified water again. Voila! One by one, the sparrows, cardinals, catbirds, nuthatch, titmouse and other small species took turns splashing in the bird bath until supper time, then departed before dusk for their home in the clump of blackberry bushes by the drive.

“How did they know that the water was purified?” I asked Vickie.

“Maybe those small heads have more brain power than humans think they have.”

“I guess because they live here at Sewanee, the bastion of elitism, they think they’re entitled to pure water.”

“Or maybe they’re just spoiled for me and my ministrations,” Vickie concluded.

Dr. Sullivan is a botanist, not an ornithologist, so I consulted my old friend, Google, and the only answer that made sense for me was a simple one: birds don’t like the additives in ordinary tap water. In fact, some bird lovers relate that they’ve seen birds drinking from mud puddles before they’d drink from bird baths filled with ordinary tap water. Think of it – chlorine, fluoride, and other chemicals pollute water that even birds disdain; in fact, many of them become ill from drinking tap water. Unfortunately, there’s no water control board in the bird world, so they’re on their own about finding good water sources.

There are many reasons for humans to watch the behavior of birds, including, it seems, that of learning good health habits. One cardinal was so grateful for the return of purified water, he dared to walk up to the herb bed by the front door and peek in. He was accompanied by a catbird who looked as if she wanted to engage in a flirtation, but the cardinal wasn’t playing. When the catbird turned her head, the cardinal lifted wing and flew off.

“If St. Francis of Assisi could get birds to sit on his shoulders, perhaps we have a chance to befriend them,” I told Vickie.

The reply to this was downright insulting. “But he was a person who had given up all the luxuries of this world, and those birds sensed his holiness.”

“I guess his stance of poverty means no allowances for purified water,” I said dejectedly.

I've written many bird poems, most of them about crows and grackles, but here’s an old “snippet” (as distinct from a full-bodied poem) from A Moment Seized that’s a bit more inclusive. It’s entitled “Spring Feathers”:

“Mockingbird shrieks in the spring air

making a stand-off with a plump jay,

too much the warrior in his incaution.

A brief fight and they glide away,

reminders of fleeting friendship.

In their tiny brains spring is a code,

a minute groove in mockingbird, robin, sparrow

foretelling the resurrection—

light out of shadow,

bloom out of folded bud,

sooth in the heart of a pistil,

the brief flurry of feather.”

Glasswork of Painted Bunting by Karen Bourque, glass artist, Church Point, Louisiana. Photographed by Dr. Victoria Sullivan as it hangs in a window of our Sewanee house.