Coming home
Spring is late this year. To my
relief, the first Eastern phoebe finally arrived yesterday morning, the
latest arrival I've noted for them on my birthday calendar (see
post 2/17/13). However, I've been looking in vain for
White-throated sparrows and Fox sparrows.
I'm very connected to these little
guys. Yesterday, just before dawn, Bob muttered “Phoebe!” but I
was already awake listening to the sound of the raspy-voiced bird
questioning and answering his name: “Fee-bee?” “Fee-bee!” He
usually sits on the laundry line that stretches between the crabapple
tree right outside our bedroom window and my shed.
The White-throated sparrows are my
favorite. In their spring breeding plumage, they hop across the
ground under my feeders with their crisp white throats, black head
stripes and little yellow spots at their lores (the space between the
eye and beak). These are the “old-sam-peabody-peabody-peabody”
birds. In my personal Pavlovian response, I immediately relax and
long for wilderness when I hear them, thanks to my teenage summers in
the Canadian north where they were my soundtrack. These guys should
be here any day.
The Fox sparrows seem to have
disappeared. This is puzzling – and a little disturbing – to me.
According to the Project Feederwatch data I collect about birds that
visit our feeders, we saw Fox sparrows every year in early April
until 2009, and never again.
Why have they stopped coming? This
really bothers me. The problem is that I care.
I believe that when you learn the name
of somebody or something, you suddenly have a relationship. When I
walk through the woods seeing wildflowers and hearing the birds, I am
among friends. And for me, the next step is to fall in love.
I used to drive down the coast a ways
to get to work, and every day I passed several osprey nests: piles of
sticks perched at the top of big power poles, or sometimes located
properly in the top of a dead tree. Ospreys return to the same nest
year after year. Every spring I waited and waited for my first
glimpse of one particular osprey back on its nest. And every spring
I worried that something had happened to it during the hazards of
migration.
Now I know this feeling again, as I
wait up on a Saturday night for Meg to get home. Deep down I know
she will be all right; she has good judgement, and she's a good driver.
Deep down I also know that anything can happen. Sometimes I think I
should just go to bed, trust the universe, give in to my personal
helplessness in this situation.
And that's the thing. I can't make
them come home safely. I've learned that from the osprey. But I
also think that we adults have a job to do, whether it is raising our
children as best we can to have good judgement, or whether it is
actually taking action to stop global warming. Personal helplessness
only goes so far. If I can be as noisy, persistent and faithful as
the Phoebe, if we all can, then we can have hope that our loved ones
will make it home.
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| Eastern phoebes often nest in the shelter of a barn... or a home |