Free As a Bird

                                                       tous les noms d’oiseaux

I have always enjoyed watching birds. Someone once said that birds have a lot to teach us.  All we have to do is listen to their songs.  Even sad birds sing.  I’m not a birder as such; I don’t necessarily search them out and maintain a life list of every bird I have encountered.  I’m content just to watch them, either on the wing or just flocking around our bird feeders looking for a free hand out. 

There is something exceptional watching birds go through their habitual activities, whether it be a pair of bald eagles soaring on a thermal overhead or a family of loons navigating a peaceful lake, their haunting call echoing across the water.  Or a flock of snow geese or a sedge of sandhill cranes lifting in unison from a marsh to continue their annual migration.  Or a squadron of pelicans assembled on an abandoned jetty preening and drying off in the sun.  A murder of crows working over the corn stubble in a winter field.  Red-wing blackbirds perched on cattails on the backwaters of the Chesapeake Bay.  Pheasant and ruffed grouse flushed from woodland puckerbrush.  To “name all the birds” in French without ever referring to a particular bird, is considered a minor insult. But how can this be when the world is full of birds of every name, size and description?  Each gives us pause to consider what it is to be free as a bird.

This morning, as I sit by the kitchen window with a good book and a cup of coffee, I am watching flights of neighborhood sparrows and finches arriving at our feeders for their morning repast.  Those who won’t fit on the perches of the crowded feeders patiently await their turn on the nearby bushes and fence.  A couple of squirrels sit on a tree limb developing a hopeless strategy to commandeer the feeders for themselves.  Soon a pair of purple grackles make unsuccessful passes trying to find purchase on these small feeders.  Red-wing blackbirds and cedar waxwings, being somewhat smaller, show them how its done as the sparrows waiting along the fence watch with what I can only imagine is smug amusement. 

What better way to begin a new day than to watch our bird neighbors begin their own?  They are the wind beneath my own wings.