NATURE + LIFE | FIRST PERSON
Mourning the World We Tamed to Death
And then there was one…
There’s a gift in winning a bird’s trust. A wary offering earned through months of sitting, still, with food near, then nearer, then touching.
I’ve cherished the gift of a bird’s trust, its family’s trust. And in this time when the fear and pain of the world seem so overwhelming, a bird landing on my hand, eyeballing me, accepting food from the altar of my palm brings simple, open joy.
The loss of a family of birds — the shocking, shrieking, terrified battle heard helplessly too far away —seems like it should be nothing compared to the toll that Covid-19 is taking. A human life, thousands of human lives, surely outweighs this one moment? But this little loss feels like more. It has brought the tears that the distant human disaster hadn’t, a weighty sadness as if all of nature has died under my watch.
At first, there was one. Raucous, screeching, with the cleverness of a corvid, but less threatening than its crow cousins, more social than its matriarch ravens. Four summers ago, I began befriending a single California Scrub Jay that frequented my feeder. I never scored more than a cursory glance, a throaty screech, until the day I discovered worms. Fresh from the fridge at my local wild bird store, mealworms are corvid caviar. Now speaking its gustatory language, the flirtation began.
Worms in a hanging tray were gathered in a messy beakful, before he plunged, plummeting from the edge, maneuvering with precision between the redwood branches to some unknown nest. Then, some worms on the rail, waking and wriggling as the sun warmed them, and I stood back, barely breathing, eyes averted until the offering was accepted. Over the following weeks, trust built, he’d arrive sooner, eat as soon as the worms were in view.
Each year, the new generation knew I was the woman with the worms, the goddess of grubs and, for their small offering of trust, I bestow great gifts.
The next year, it took only a few days until the memory of safety emerged and the Jay would eat within a few inches of my hand, then from my hand as it lay on the deck railing, then from my hand in midair. He lands gently, surprisingly light, bony grip on finger or palm. He brought a mate, and in time fledglings.
Each year, the new generation knew I was the woman with the worms, the goddess of grubs and, for their small offering of trust, I bestow great gifts. But I worship them more than they me. They are always wild, cautious, quick to vanish as my dog lumbers onto the deck. They grab greedily, never sure that the plenty will last.
The female will grab worms from the railing, pick them out of the kitchen window herb box and then proceed to toss soil out in the hopes of finding more, stopping to glare through the window, annoyed that she has to continue her search. Head cocked, she contemplates landing on my hand, but thinks better of it. I place separate piles 10 feet apart on the railing so the shy one has a chance to share the feast. They battle for the worms, a mated pair fighting over which one gets to bring the bounty back to the nest. Each one is foraging for the all, a family to keep fed.
This year, they quickly realized my working from home means feedings can happen any time I enter the kitchen. A snack for me means a possibility for them, and as I stand at the sink, one or more looks in from the window-side oak, doing a quick bob to ensure they are seen amongst the leaves. They have spread their trust to the man who is often nearby, even though he rarely bears worms. Blue and gray, they brake, mid-air, land lightly on his knee, eyeing me under their professorial white eyebrows, and then look around for the small plastic pot of live worms.
There were 11 missed calls on my phone. Four texts went unanswered. I was in the kitchen, taking fragrant banana bread from the oven, when my husband came in. “I’ve been trying to reach you. There were three. Three chicks. They were in the vegetable garden. I tried to reach you, I knew you’d want to see them.” My husband’s seen how the few minutes in the late afternoon when I sit on the deck and feed the birds unknots my shoulders, releases a smile that has been lost in an unaware grimace. He knows that the first sighting of a year’s fledglings is as joyful as my seasonal calendar gets. My cell was on vibrate, across the room, and I missed the first sighting.
As Scrub Jay chicks practice independence, they start with short hops, a flutter of a few feet. They feign adulthood until a parent comes by, and then fluff their down, pull their wings back in a plaintive flutter, open their beaks to the sky, and gargle an ask. As Michael sat in the garden on Saturday, three fledglings jumped clumsily, practiced pecking the ground, fluttered the few feet up to the fence top and grabbed and staggered before regaining equanimity. The parents — the male who has manipulated both of us to give him the lion’s share of worms and his cautious mate who will flap towards us before remembering we are the Other and veer, mid flap, back to safety — oversaw their excursion.
By Sunday, there were four. Two parents, two fledglings. This time I was there, worms in hand, awaiting the chicks. As the parents saw me, they brought the chicks over. They jumped in and out of the untamed thicket the other side of the fence, journeyed to the vegetable patch. They fluffed and threw back their wings and pled, rewarded with all the gifts plucked by their parent from my hand. Another generation witnessing my beneficence. But there were only two chicks. We feared the absent one had been killed. But there was still balance. Two parents, two fledglings.
And then there was one. Not one chick: one Jay.
Tuesday, as we had chips and salsa for our sheltered Cinco de Mayo, we sat in the late afternoon warmth. From our deck, nestled in a redwood and several stories above our sharply sloping lot, you can barely see the vegetable garden that sits in the one sunny corner of our yard. But we hear the Jays’ unpretty squawks as they come and go, our deck only one of their stops in a day’s gathering. The parents use the telephone lines that run along the bottom of our yard as a lookout post, resting there as they survey for food or danger or each other.
The shocking, shrieking, terrified battle erupted quickly. More than the squawks to scare off an attacker, the birds screamed, loud, pained calls. It lasted for at least a minute, long enough for me to process what was happening, realize it was much more than the occasional squabbles we hear. Shoving my feet into my gardening clogs by the front door, I clunked as quickly as I could across the parking deck, down the side stairs, and down more and more stairs until I reached the bottom corner of the garden, my husband close behind. The shrieking had stopped, the last squawks happening as we ran.
There was no movement. No sound. No rustling in the bushes. No injured tweeting. There was just one bird on the wire. And silence.
I sat in the bottom of the garden, having peered through the fence to see if an injured chick needed help, explored every angle to see if there was a viewing point where I could see what happened, who survived. I had no answers, but I knew. Then the tears came.
The tears are for nature injured, fading every year with fewer birds, fewer bees. The tears are for the forests burned, the oceans heated, the unstoppable change.
I haven’t lost anyone to this pandemic. My life hasn’t changed much as I worked from home before this all started. But I have obsessed over the numbers, read the WHO and CDC sites, studied up on mask types and best practices, barely left the house. A colleague has lost her former mother in law, another has a cousin who is sick. My parents far away are taking it seriously but it’s all academic, the intellectual sadness of the numbers emerging from a war distant in time or place. It’s been overwhelming, angering, depressing, but not sad.
The tears are for the mother and now three chicks gone. The tears are for the one lone bird on the wire. The tears are for habitat invaded, cats domesticated, ecosystems polluted. The tears are for nature injured, fading every year with fewer birds, fewer bees. The tears are for the forests burned, the oceans heated, the unstoppable change.
The tears are for the wild world which we tamed to death.
The lone survivor is the male. He visited the kitchen window this morning. Out of worms, I gave him seed. He glared, flew off, then came back to accept it. He’s only foraging for one.
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