They Do Demand Attention

The birds songs outside this morning here in Oakland are just remarkable.  I stayed in San Francisco the last two mornings but I don’t recall hearing the local birds.  One of them is calling out with a one, two, three and then a hold on the fourth note.  Another bird, a presume to be the same species is responding by calling out one, two and then trilling the third note.  Perhaps it is the same bird, who alternates the count for a reason I can’t fathom.   Some other fellow is chirping out a staccato, rather less stylized song, from another part of the wood.  I almost chose the verb “tweet” but that has now been taken from us.

Birds are almost surely what inspired early man make music.  If I were to really concentrate on this remarkable dialogue every morning you’d eventually want to do more than listen.  You’d try to engage and direct a response.  But you’d need silence from highways, and earbuds and talking.   And one would need to make the time to listen.  And these languages would need to be ones you thought it valuable to learn.  These birds are lovely.  But they’re not the birds of my youth.  These calls don’t remind me of any I knew.  But they do demand attention.

It’s only now I notice that there is a bird feeder out the window.  It’s half full of seed.  I hadn’t seen it before.  But just now large jay came up and tried to stand on the short foot rest and pluck from inside the canister.  He was sporting a flat cut top and I thought of our bluejays back home in New York.  But this wasn’t a bluejay.  He was dark like a crow.  Perhaps this feeder is up too close to the house.  I suspect if it were back further up in the wood, it would be harder to see, but there would be more activity.

The Bluejay has a call that does remind me of childhood.  It’s not the sweetest of songs but surely it is more lovely than the wretched shearing of it’s cousin the magpie announces itself with back in Beijing.  I haven’t moved but the birds I heard fifteen minutes ago all seem to have moved on. Like a traveling circus, or the view out a high-speed rail, we now have a different cast.  Perhaps they were always, there and only now are they recognizable as their songs have filled out the silence.  But as the morning proceeds, the highway is getting louder now as well.  There is more traffic and the birds seem to have eaten their full and romanced as much as they need to.  They’re quieting down now.  It’s passing.

Sunday, 05/21/17