Birds

Robins

Sometimes, when I walk by the school with Rufus and the sun is low in the sky and the colors are becoming muted by evening, I see the field full of robins. They all seem to stop and turn their heads towards us as we follow the fence line down to the end of the road. Then one by one, they scoot a foot to the left or right and go back to their hunt.

At first, I felt an uneasiness about all these robins. They are from where I grew up, but their numbers here are noticeably many. They have a look in their eye that other small birds don’t have. They swell their orange breasts and let out songs.

Robins are a sign of good luck, a bringer of good fortune. 

They protect against storms and fire. 

Have one fly into your home and you may need to rethink your relationship.

All birds are divine messengers. They bring news from other worlds. 

We don’t need to imagine a strange world. Watching birds flit among trees is strange. Most worlds we know of that are covered in a crust are just rock and minerals. Here we have these tall organic stems reaching for the sun that birds use as homes. 

Hear a robin sings in the morning and there will be rain.

It isn’t a weird thing to be a little unsettled seeing all those robins following Rufus and me with their beady little eyes, the robin is fiercely territorial. They will attack other birds who venture close to their area.

They allow some other birds to be in their presence. I have seen crows and seagulls walk among them as they hunt the grass for bugs and worms. 

While robins stay around all year round, the robin does signify new beginnings. They are the bird of spring – the end of winter. The fields are muddy and the trees are still naked. The robins graze in these fields in the morning and evening. They perch in those bare trees. 

From afar they can confuse the casual observer with an angel or a much more exotic bird, but they leave an imprint as you stare at where they were wondering what you saw. Only the quick eye can see that it was just a robin.

While the red cardinal gets all the glory for being red in the snow, let’s not take for granted the redbreast in the winter white. 

Sometimes when I am walking from point A to point B, I notice the robins observe my progress. Are they reporting to each other? Is there a system in place tracking my paths? Should I try and lose the robins? Do other birds help? I am tracked as I make it down to the river and then come back.

Crows

I work under a skylight. My skylight faces north. There is a stream of light that travels across my desk as the sun goes across the sky. 

Sometimes when I’m there a shadow will track across my desk. I never see it though. Was it a bird? A squirrel?

One day I looked up and saw three crows staring down at me. When they noticed I was aware of them, they flew off.

What kind of omen are three crows?

Am I going to die?

Yes.

While crows and ravens can mean such serious and fatalist omens, three crows signify future festive events are coming to pass.

Most groups of crows are called a murder, but some call three crows a parliament as they sat and judged me sitting there working. It must be confusing to them that I must do all of what I do to do what they just do when they need to. 

For one delicious meal at a good restaurant, I must sit at that desk for one hour. A crow will feast on what lies dead.

One crow might mean sorrow while two might mean joy. Three is supposed to mean a girl, but I cannot make babies. 

I wonder if the three crows will be back.

Maybe there will just be one or two.

The Nuthatch

There is a hole in the fence that is now being used as a new home for a nuthatch. The downstairs dog likes to attack the post. The bird is staying put. 

The hole goes through the fence post and there is a hollow going down from the hole. Peeking in you can just see the top of its head. It knows I am looking down at it, but it is staying.

Two people live downstairs and their dog. There are two of us upstairs with our dog. We go in and out of the gate that closes and shakes the fence. The nuthatch is staying there.

Sometimes people will walk by walking their dogs. Rufus will try and look from under the fence and the downstairs dog will try and look over the fence. The fence will buckle as the dogs try to see what is walking by. The nuthatch stays in its hole.

Certain events will happen and all the dogs in the whole city bark. Even Rufus will stiffen and his ears will stick out and he will huff and puff and finally barks at whatever the other dogs are also barking at. The whole city erupts in barks. The birds all stay where they are.

Geese

I started hearing gunshots in the afternoon. They were happening in the middle of the day and happening near a school. 

The boom echoed across the neighborhood. It was always a single blast of a shotgun. 

One day I heard the shot ring out and then I heard the honking of geese flying overhead. 

It was a golf course scaring off flocks of Canada geese.

Golfers should not have to putt over geese’ poop, so ordinance must be dispatched.

The Hawk & the Chicken

The neighbors have chickens. There is a ratchety rooster that crows while hens cluck about. They are behind us, and since the house behind us is above, they sit parallel to our apartment. When the windows are open you can always hear the rooster crow.

One day there was some family in the backyard. Adults were talking and kids were running around. I was sitting at my desk so I can live when the adults started yelling and the kids screamed and cried.

A hawk had swooped and caught a chicken right in front of the kids and was eating it on the roof of the house directly behind us. 

It made part of that day stuck at my desk so I can live bearably. I laughed.

Spring

The birds are coming back. It is spring and summer is now looming over the land. The heaviness of humidity is settling on the air. 

The Green Man walks through the wood.

I thought I saw him standing at the edge of the golf course. His face is covered in leaves, but he is naked. There was the smell of soil mixed with something putrid. Antlers were coming from the sides of his head.

He stood in the middle of a rafter of turkeys. Two toms spread their tails and became the Green Man’s guardians. The hens all stared at me alert and with suspicion.

I felt cold fear.

The toms gobbled violently. I knew I was not supposed to be there. 

Neither was the golf course nor the school I was walking through nor were any of the houses there. None of this is supposed to be here. 

What do you do when it’s already there?

A flock of cowbirds settled into the cedar trees that I stood next to in the shade watching the Green Man staring back at me. 

It is hot but there is a sprinkle of rain.

The turkeys start running through a hole in the fence into a neighboring field. Robins erupt into the trees above the running turkeys.

The Green Man is no longer there. 

I am alone with my dog.

I watch birds fly from tree to tree.

I can smell ozone from the rain. 

I walk to a small courtyard at the school and there is an alter. There aren’t many alters around. One must enter churches and pray to a dead god with money, but this is not one of those alters, this is an alter to the earth. Vines climb the wall behind it. My dog is sniffing it with caution – he feels the power there. 

We make an offering and walk back home. We don’t notice that all the birds have held their breath until we are inside our house

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