Winter Birds

As Thomas Berry pointed out, if we lived on the moon our minds, emotions, speech, imagination, and sense of the Divine would all reflect the barrenness of the lunar landscape. Instead, thankfully, we’re here on the rich, bountiful Earth, if only for a short while. Earth, where, if we’re not paying attention, the miracle of life can almost be taken for granted.

But life here on Earth is changing. Always changing. And so much of the change that we experience is heartbreaking. The climate destabilized, so many unique beings, millions of years in the making, extinguished, their voices forever silenced. Many birds have vanished. The world grown quieter, only humans are louder. 

Everything changed for me when I stopped taking birds for granted. I saw life as much more tenuous and precious, more beautiful. 

I can’t even look at human beings the same, knowing, despite all appearances, how very lightly we are here. Entitled to nothing. All concepts of rights rendered meaningless.

So here now, in the depths of winter when bird song is heard, when the elegance of their flight lifts me up, my heart sings too.

The cheerful flocks of robins, harbingers of the spring we hope will come. The sleek Townsend’s Solitaire, with the high pitched whistle, that’s her fluttering down to pick a berry before perching back at the top of the tree. The quick flash of color from the flickers, the sapsuckers with their food caches methodically tucked into holes in the trees only they can reach. The humble junco, the bouncing ouzels on the icy river rocks. The nuthatches, chickadees, kingfishers, ravens, jays, hawks, owls and eagles — all staying the winter, trusting and putting in the effort survival requires. Modeling so very much for the humans desperately trying to find their way home.

I think about the winter birds sometimes on the snowiest days and the coldest nights. Doing what I tell myself I couldn’t do. Close to the edge, breathing steadily through the long, dark night, sometimes staying just warm enough to live. 

And it seems anyway, that they do it without complaint.

There are some sandhill cranes that now overwinter in this valley. That’s a change. And there’s so many more unseen changes, subtle, inexorable. How are the warblers faring on their winter grounds? Will the hummingbirds find enough food to make their way back (and how the hell do they pull that off anyway)? 

The predictions are that the birds will grow quieter still — too much human sprawl, too much deforestation, too many brightly lit high rise buildings to crash into at night, too many cats, too many pesticides, not enough food.

So maybe there is one thing that can be expected? The human heart will continue to be rendered. Sadness will be ever present, insistent. And this, absolutely necessary, given what we’ve done and how we live. Necessary for our evolution and the survival of ourselves and all of the others. Necessary for our opening and perhaps, some eventual humility. Maybe we’ll make room yet for the stranger in all her forms?

I’ve heard there are good numbers of snow geese and other birds at the confluence of the rivers. I’ll go there soon to pay my respects and to be inspired. I will bow and pray and find the courage for another day.