Wondertimes
I wish I knew what was going on.
We maintain several bird feeders on the farm, stocked with black oil sunflower seed. In the past week, I’ve noticed that the bird activity has dropped almost to zero. The hummingbirds are busier than ever, draining their feeders at a faster rate than usual. But the regular bird feeders have been deserted. One almost expects to see a swinging saloon door creaking in the wind while tumbleweeds bounce down the road in front of them. This is very unusual, as I can hear the cardinals and wrens and titmice and all the other songbirds calling from the trees ringing our farm. But an invisible barrier seems to have dropped down, separating the winged ones from us. Has anyone else noticed such a phenomenon lately?
With some of the odd things going on in the world and in my life, I think often of my friend WJT, William writes with authority about synchronicities and symbols and other mysteries, all described with his supple mind and restless, questing spirit.
At work, my crows have been very active and demanding. The other day, a cooper’s hawk almost nabbed one of the crows right in front of me, the crow making a very narrow escape. Back at the home place, a cooper’s hawk took a dove right in front of me, his bullet body slamming into the dove at a hundred miles an hour…POW! went the explosion of feathers, and it all happened in a flash, and this was all right after I was reading Loren Eisley’s observations on these birds…and in the middle of a passage in his memoirs, Eisley mentioned Algernon Blackwood, whom I only recently discovered by “accident,” and it’s all been very eerie and portent-laden.
The deer near our farm have been numerous and bold, peeking around trees and snorting at Jinx and me, but without fleeing. There is a cold friendliness, a you can’t hurt us element hanging like fog betwixt them and me. Could it be that they sense something, some coming event? Could it be that they are more than mute witnesses? I must spend more time meditating on the minds of animals…
As I noted above, the hummingbirds are piercing the air like jade darts, the creatures that Madame Defarge would have liked to have kept at her sanctimonious and well-meaning side, busy and busy and busy, drinking and courting and mating and preparing to prepare, readying to make ready, their long autumn migration already in their tiny minds, their work ethic shaming me as I watch them fly and cry and glide and slide and live. They live completely. And they are aware of their own beauty. I’m convinced of this.
Jinx and I were on the road this evening when a distant neighbor approached us from the opposite direction. Her farm is situated where the highway meets our gravel road. She favors aggressive, unpleasant dogs like boxers, and was walking one of these bellicose dogs when we met them. Jinx, normally a very easygoing fellow, wanted badly to fight my neighbor’s dog. I snapped the leash onto his collar and was grateful for the ability to control him, because the other dog was much larger and more aggressive. While the two dogs snarled and strutted and lunged, the neighbor and I chatted. Then I pulled Jinx away and we returned home. Jinx kept looking at me with the liquid question, Why? I coulda taken him…
The hot evening melted down into a very warm night. Mid nineties today, the same tomorrow, and who knows when it will rain?
Right now, everyone in the house is asleep, save me, me with my tapping fingers and my sunburnt neck and my failing eyes. My life is quiet, and in the morning there will be coffee and eggs. The birds may be at a distance for some mysterious reason, but they will be singing. And the sun will hang above the shimmering horizon for a bit while the spotted dog and I amble along the roads and fields. and these moments are the pages of our bible, and the stones in the road are our rosary beads, and the honeysuckle scent serves as our incense. Clear air and clear minds and unsure steps and half-hidden smiles. These are our days here in this summer world.
~ S.K. Orr
6 Comments
Heather Shaler
I just moved from the suburbs of the local Big City to a few acres in the country a couple months ago, so I don’t yet have a feel for what the norm is in this part of the world. The former owners made it sound like a positive zoo, but there are so few birds and squirrels that I almost know them individually. The deer are definitely bold. Last week a doe left her fawns in the front yard for several hours while she foraged. One time, three fawns ran right up to us! It was a magical moment. Then we looked over and discovered that the rank smell pervading the property was a dead doe, probably their mother. The babies melted back into the forest, and I haven’t seen them since.
The hummingbirds have been completely crazy! All my life, they’ve been shy little things, whispering around the flowers, whisking away if you so much as breathe. Out here they seem larger, rocketing around like grenades on wings, completely unafraid, making me duck when I hear their approach, which is much louder than any I’ve heard before. I’ve taken up orchid growing because it’s hard to coax garden plants out of the rocky, shady soil of this ancient mountain. The hummingbirds are also partial to my favorite orchid, and seem visibly irritated with me for moving it around based on the weather and sunlight levels.
admin
Congratulations, Heather, on being able to move to the country. My prayer for you and your family is that y’all never get used to it, never get jaded, never take it for granted. This has been my prayer for US all these years here at our farm, and it has been answered many times over. Every morning when I am on the road with Jinx, I think, “I can’t believe I get to live here…”
I hope the fawns survive and thrive; such a flinty, eviscerating teacher is nature. A couple of years ago, I stumbled onto two fawns in a meadow across the road. They had been left there by their mama — and they know very well not to move from where their mama leaves them — and I fretted over them after hearing coyotes up on the ridge that night, hoping mama had survived her day of foraging, and had returned and retrieved them.
The more you watch hummingbirds, the more fascinated you will be by them, and the more drawn into their whizzing, whirring world you will be. When they do that kamikaze thing where they fly inches past your face at top speed…they are testing you. Not your courage, but your friendship. They’re sussing you out to see if you’re going to swat at them or try to harm them. Once they realize you’re friendly, they will come to you. While you’re filling their feeders, they will get right up in your face and hover there, watching you and urging you along. “Hurry up, mum….we’re starving….can’t you move any faster?” When they get comfortable with you, try sitting in a chair near the feeder(s) and holding a feeder in your hand, perhaps propped on your knee so as not to exhaust your arm. My wife has fed them like this. It’s thrilling to have one of them perch on your thumb while drinking the nectar you prepared for them.
I empathize with you about rocky soil…as I’ve noted before, our soil is like a gravel pit into which someone stirred a few cupfuls of topsoil. Doggone those glaciers…
Thank you so much for stopping by and commenting, Heather. Christ’s blessings be upon you and your family.
Heather Shaler
That’s amazing information about hummingbirds! Thank you!
Genie Hughes
Yes, could definitely be the hawk. Ours swooped in and took a mourning dove. I cried and my pragmatic husband said Do you want the hawk to starve, then? He left for better hunting grounds. The hawk, I mean. We have several who circle, but they don’t normally sit on the fence. Up side, now that our pool has dark plaster, rocks around it and grass to the edge, we have new visitors who think it’s a pond! A heron flew down for a look and it is also the tryst location for young raccoons who sneak over the fence after curfew. Typical teenagers. And a possum every now and again.
Craig Davis
Regarding the birds not eating at your feeders, have you considered that you may have gotten a bad bag of seed?
admin
Well, it’s a good question, Craig…my sis sent me an email just before you left this comment, and she was asking the same thing. I really don’t think that’s it, though. We buy high quality seed with no trash in it. We’ve gotten some in the past that was full of crap…twigs, bark, etc, and the birds didn’t like it. This is different, though. It’s like a no-fly zone has been enacted in the area around the farmhouse.
My wife and I were talking tonight, and we’re starting to believe it may be the presence of the Coopers hawk that showed up. He’s perched nearby constantly, and we’re thinking the birds are unwilling to be his dinner. The hummingbirds seem to be aware that they’re too small and too swift to interest him. I don’t know…I’m still trying to figure it out.