I think maybe moving here has made my brain soft – I’ve developed a thing for birds. Not that kind of thing. Geez. But still – a thing. Actually, the bird thing started in Africa, and it was completely unexpected. A safari is about the big five. Giraffes. Hippos. Exotic cats and baboons and baobab trees – not birds. A couple on our safari (who had been to Botswana) started the whole thing. Birds, they told me. Don’t neglect the birds. My face must have given me away because they insisted. They weren’t “into” birds either, but in Africa…. I mentally filed that advice away as nothing short of bird brained as we bounced down the rutted track into the Ngorongoro Crater and strained my eyes to see if maybe those far off shapes were zebras. We stopped and I leaned over the edge of the truck to point my zoom at those – yes! they were! zebras! when Marvel stopped me. We’ll be so much closer later, she said. Look over there, in the thorn tree. We stopped for the bee eaters.
Bee Eaters? I looked where she pointed and there was a pair of tidily plump birds, backs as green as envy and chests like yellow crayons. A thin black mask extended front and back of the eye and turned into a long curved beak when it reached the end of feathers. They were sitting closely together and when I pointed my camera at them I saw a smudge of turquoise eye shadow in the black band. Clickclick went the shutter, and again, clickclick and somehow in those fractions of seconds I was won over to the avian side, though it would take a few more days before I realized how totally I’d been converted.
Of course the ostriches were a great spot, striding along the crater floor with easy speed, giant flouncing dust mops of birds, pink neck and legs making them look like half naked girls in French Maid costumes. The flamingos, too, were a sight, just a smear of dingy pink along the edge of the shoreline, feathers in the offseason color of cream. The Secretary Birds were hard to miss, tall homely girls in black stockings with wide butts and confused looks on their faces. And then there were the guinea hens, roving bands of polka dots that swerved confusedly beneath bushes and bobbed their little blue heads in unison. But when I got excited about a close up portrait of an all brown Hammerkopf I knew that I had gone over the edge. For the rest of the safari, I was as jazzed about good bird sightings as I was about anything else. The tiny and jeweled malachite Kingfisher, the swooping elegant fishing of the Spoonbill, the Egyptian ducks (heavily into eyeliner), the entire tree full of lemon-lime Lorikeets, even the vultures, one variety in particular looking like an aged and ominous undertaker in a shabby suit. All these I thrilled to (and more!) but nothing quite had the cachet of the famed Lilac Breasted Roller, LBR for short. Our safari friends had seen them in Botswana and were on the lookout – when we finally spotted one, I understood why. The body of the bird is a bit scrawny, but the colors! Miami Vice turquoise on the back of the head and underside of the lower body. A spot of metallic blue on the wing, a rumpled gray head and then the eponymous lilac breast, all in perpetual motion through the sky.
So, yeah. Birds. But that was Africa, vacation, a place with more variety than we can even imagine or take in. Who knew that the avian flu would lodge in my brain and move here to Tennessee? I knew I was in trouble last year when I spotted a pair of bluebirds outside the kitchen window, but the winter proliferation of cardinals has been my undoing. I love them, all cheeky chirps and saucy crest. The black mask and thick beak give them character far beyond their actual intelligence and I’ve set up a feeder right outside my office window so that I can lure them close enough to watch. I’ve made a friend, a vocal boy who sits on the top of the shepherd’s hook and complains about the type of seed I’m providing. He likes to chase off the other comers, too, but he can’t keep them all away, and over the past week I’ve seen house finches, bluebirds, sparrows, mockingbirds and a few others that my trusty pocket guide has failed to identify.
The robins have been flocking all of a sudden, great fat chests glowing warm in the sun that is venturing out from winter. I think there are blackbirds by the creek, but they don’t come close enough for me to be sure. I know I’ve seen a few jays and a few woodpeckers and there are hawks a plenty every time we leave the house, intently hunting from the telephone lines. I think it is only a matter of weeks before my wild turkey shows herself again, and as long as she doesn’t appear feasting on my tulip bulbs, we’ll continue to be friends. I’ve got a house to put up for the purple martins, in hopes of attracting a colony, and I think I heard the finch pecking at my back window last night.
I don’t want to jinx it, but the bird behavior and the sun and the feel of the air are telling me it might (just might) be the beginning of spring. I’ve liked winter, been pleased that it held on tightly to the cold and the snow and the sparkling frost, but I think I’m ready. Ready to work in the earth, sit in the sun, watch the birds and hear them sing. I want to see the bulbs bloom above the dark cold dirt, see the leaves appear on the trees, drink in the sweet smell of growth. As much as I love the cardinal for his flashy winter color in a sea of gray, I’m ready for the sweet spring of a pair of bluebirds.
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