Wild Thing

As I rushed off to Pilates class the other day, a glance toward our basement window stopped me in my tracks.

There, on the INSIDE of the glass, sat a sparrow looking out.

My first thought was a Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson article, “Do Animals Get Depressed?” He contends that only captive and domesticated animals experience depression—not wild animals. Well, if he saw this tiny bird, I’m sure he’d change his mind. I see a LOT of sparrows around here yet have never seen any look like this one—forlorn, hopeless, still.

My second thought was to help the poor little guy.

I ran back into the apartment to tell my husband, who promptly (and without my feeble assistance) ushered the bird’s return to the outdoors.

Crisis averted and wild life restored. It doesn’t get better than that.

[Artist unknown.]

Bird Briefs, Part 2

They’re fluttering outside my windows and inside my books: birds. Thought I’d say a few words about them.

Extreme Rescue
Sy Montgomery’s latest book, Birdology, is a delightful collection of stories, histories, lore, and facts about seven avian species (or, if some scientists get their way, seven dinosaur species). She devotes one chapter to hummingbirds, profiling the day-to-day efforts of a “hummer” rehabber who specializes in fostering orphaned baby hummers—so tiny they’re best observed with the aid of a magnifying glass.

One member of the 340+ hummingbird species journeys from Mexico to Alaska each year—the longest migration, in terms of body length, of any bird. The first portion of the course includes a trek across the Gulf of Mexico—a 21-hour, nonstop flight. It’s a miraculous show of stamina and endurance, and not every hummer is up to it. Montgomery mentions one unfortunate bird who collapsed on an oil rig. The (unnamed) oil company ordered a helicopter to transport the feathered patient to a wildlife rehabber in the States, where the little guy spent months recuperating in a greenhouse. He caught up with his pals on their return migration to Mexico. I’m not sure which is more amazing: the hummers’ migration or the oil company’s good deed.


Say It Isn’t So
If you’ve read Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, you know how packed it is with details about 1890s Chicago—the dust, the odors, the politics. Of all the remarkable and sometimes shocking facts Larson presents, one in particular stood out to me. Frederick Law Olmsted, as part of the magical landscape he conjured for the Columbian Exposition, populated the lagoons with birds. Larson writes: “Olmsted had ordered more than eight hundred ducks and geese, seven thousand pigeons, and for the sake of accent a number of exotic birds, including four snowy egrets, four storks, two brown pelicans, and two flamingoes.”

SEVEN THOUSAND PIGEONS? Really? Weren’t there enough pigeons in Chicago already? Every species on Olmsted’s list is a water bird except the pigeon. Could it be that a critical word—say, Guillemot—was omitted from the copy? Perhaps Olmsted imported 7,000 Guillemot Pigeons to the fair, which would make sense. Readers, can you shed any light on this matter?


Platonic Pairings
I’ve written before about LuckyBird and his sparrow pal. What I’ve not yet relayed is that we have been watching two other similar pairs at our feeders. The cardinals are young adults and, in both cases, the sparrows seem more committed to the relationships than their crimson counterparts. Is it misguided, unrequited love? Are they just friends? Will they ever mate with their own kind? Again, dear readers, if you know anything about cross-species relationships, please enlighten me.

“Birds teach us reverence—a virtue that, writes classicist and philosopher Paul Woodruff, ‘begins in a deep understanding of human limitations.’ ”
—from Birdology, by Sy Montgomery

[Art by Ernst Haeckel (top) and Charley Harper (bottom).]

Bird Briefs

Plumage-Watch Duty Ends
It pleases me to inform you that LuckyBird now sports a full and glorious tail of red and black. The tailless Cardinal has frequented our feeder ever since I first reported him to you—sometimes alone, other times accompanied by his Sparrow pal. He always peers through the window at us, as if to say, “Hey! Are you in there?” or “Hi guys! Watcha doin’ today?” or “Are you ever going to invite me in?” He acts as if he’s part of our inner circle.


Horsepower and the Urban Barnyard
Walked down our street the other day and saw the Chickens again. They were exploring their new next-door neighbor’s driveway. I love that I can see a Maserati parked there one evening and the next watch some curious fowl strut around the same area. (Yes, my quaint, manicured neighborhood of tiny, storybook homes occasionally offers a little eye candy to car enthusiasts: Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches, vintage Mercedes and Jaguars… Interesting demographics here. You can’t pigeonhole these folks.)

See Me! Feed Me! Love Me!
It’s baby-bird season now and I have delighted in watching their feeding rituals. The Sparrow mothers have been feeding their offspring from our feeders—sometimes in the yard, sometimes on our window ledge. The youngsters flutter their wings at a hummingbird pace while crying at a frantic pitch. They hold their mouths open, reaching their heads toward the sky in anticipation of their mothers’ next nourishment drop. Once these babies are on their own, their first few trips to the feeders are both comical and worrisome. They teeter on the perches, fighting to remain upright. They struggle to figure out how to turn toward the food while maintaining their balance. And just when it looks like they’re about to relax into a meal, an older bird swoops in and scares them back to Square One. The laborious process begins again, but their confidence is shakier than before. The feeder is a class in bird behavior and an inkling of how much the fledglings must learn in order to survive.


Hearing a Different Tune
Confidence was no problem for one unusually small young Sparrow. He swiftly mastered the balancing part of the feeder routine, and approached the eating stage in a far more direct manner. He worked his way down the perch until he could lean against the ceramic wall of the feeder. After a bit of maneuvering, he managed to extend his right foot up onto the edge of a feeder opening and hoist his upper body in through the opening. All I could see of the diminutive acrobat was his tail and his left leg. He got what he came for and I haven’t seen him since. But I will never forget his resourcefulness and chutzpah.

“The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”
—Eric Berne

I know precious little about birds. Many times I wish I could match the song or call I hear to the bird it’s coming from. Part of me wants to know more about their behavior and social structures. But I think I derive greater pleasure from their mystery, allowing it to stoke my imagination and my fondness for them.