departure
Double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus)Given their propensity to perch atop pilings or promontories while drying their outstretched wings, cormorants too often are regarded as little more than featureless silhouettes.
In truth, both their appearance and their behaviors are complex and interesting. Fishermen may despise them for their ability to out-fish humans, and tourists often ridicule them for their apparent ungainliness, but at least one poet found himself inspired by the remarkable bird.
The birds don’t alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment that collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They enter their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We’re the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn’t hear
what singing completes us?“Praise Them” ~ Li-Young Lee
Meet Isoceles, the grackle with the triangular perch
Strictly speaking, this handsome bird is a grackle rather than a blackbird: specifically, a boat-tailed grackle (Quiscalus major). Often seen along the Gulf coast, it can be distinguished from the common grackle by its dark eyes; common grackles’ eyes tend to be a bright yellowish-gold.
Ogden Nash once wrote a humorous if not entirely complimentary little ditty for the grackle, but the stately demeanor of this bird seemed to demand something more. Wallace Stevens was able to describe “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and these four ways especially appeal to me:
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
White-lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata) enjoying a columbine patchAccustomed to the sight of sphinx moths among her flowers, a friend never thought to point out the one flitting and sipping its way through the evening primroses that had slipped under the fence and into her garden. “Look!” I said.”A hummingbird!” Amused, she corrected my mistake. “It’s not a hummingbird, it’s a moth. People call them hummingbird moths, or hawk-moths, because of the way they hover. See if you can get a picture of it.” Continue reading
Mourning dove (Zenaida macroura)Solitary, quiet, the dove lingers: perhaps one of the pair that tended their nest in a nearby palm, or perhaps even their youngster, satisfied with the neighborhood and unwilling to leave.
Mornings, it comes for water. Evenings, as pigeons roost in a flurry of wings and the sun lowers toward the horizon, it reappears on my railing, content to bask in the evening’s glow until darkness compels it home. Continue reading
Scissor-tailed flycatcher (Tyrannus forficatus) perched along a Galveston West End bayouWhile herons and robins, egrets and larks receive multitudes of mentions in poetry — if not complete poems written in their honor — other birds seem to be ignored. Walter de la Mare wrote about the spotted flycatcher, and Nissim Ezekiel memorialized an unfortunate paradise flycatcher, but the scissor-tailed flycatcher, sometimes known as the Texas bird of paradise, has no well-known poem to call its own.
On the other hand, one typical behavior of our flycatcher — the tendency to perch on power lines or barbed wire fences while scanning for prey — has been written about. In what may be her best-known poem, Emily Dickinson takes the perching bird as her controlling metaphor, and expands on it delightfully.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Proust had his madeleines. I have my robins.
The murmuring of robins evokes for me a quieter, more gracious world: childhood summers filled with the soft, shallow breathing of curtains at the window; faint scents of spirea and lilac; quiet, melodic wisps of song as parents encourage their nestlings toward sleep.
Baby robins wait for worms in Mena, ArkansasRobins migrating through Texas will call to one another from the treetops, or create a tell-tale rustling of leaves as they search out insects and fruit in wooded areas, but coastal dwellers rarely hear this thrush’s song.
Last week, after sighting a first robin in Muskogee, Oklahoma, I luxuriated in their calls and songs as I traveled through Missouri and Arkansas. Occasionally, amused but sympathetic, I moved away so that parents could feed their babies.
The babies’ parent with a worm, nicely turned
The nature of robins — their cheerfulness, their industry, their almost self-effacing demeanor — helps to make them delightful icons of midwestern life. The trill of the corn-clinging blackbird might be more obvious; the rush of air past a nighthawk’s wings more dramatic; but the dependable robins are the ones whose song begins and ends the day.
Mary Oliver, born in Maple Heights, Ohio and a resident of Camden, Maine as a teenager, certainly heard the robin’s song throughout her formative years. But she more than heard it; she experienced, internalized, and reshaped the song, returning it to us here in soft, solemn, and perfect words that honor the well-loved bird.
It was spring
and I finally heard him
among the first leaves––
then I saw him clutching the limbin an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood stilland thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness––
and that’s when it happened,when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree––
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upwardlike rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing––
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemednot a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfect blue sky–––all of themwere singing.
And, of course, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t lastFor more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then––open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.“Such Singing in the Wild Branches” ~ Mary Oliver
