More Birds

Today it was a cardinal! (Another of my favorites.)

Again, back home there were always cardinals around. I gather they most likely weren't the same cardinals - our winter birds would have come down from the north, and our summer birds up from the south - but one cardinal, to this casual observer of birds, looks much like another. The redbirds were always around. Here, they are indeed birds of passage - I haven't been at this new office over the winter yet, so I don't know if any of these "new" birds will spend the winter here or if they're just passing through. I hope they stay, though: those flashes of scarlet and blue in the bare trees or the dark evergreens make the winter months pass more pleasantly.

The geese have evidently departed. At least, I haven't seen them in weeks, and they were pretty obvious when they were around. It's a funny thing, migration... back home, in East Tennessee, there were never any geese around when I was growing up. We weren't even on a flyway; I never heard them at night as they passed by. In fact, I was in some doubt that one could actually mistake them for hounds - they were birds, after all, honking great geese - literally. (When I moved here, I heard them a lot, spring and autumn both - and yes, I believe it now. They do sound like the Wild Hunt, the Cwn Annwn, the hounds of the otherworld. They really do.) But back around '81, while I was in Germany, a huge storm blew a flock over the Appalachians and they wintered in town. And they never left.

They're still there. Seriously. Clearly, they looked around and said to themselves "This is Goose Heaven!", and, like the policemen in Pirates of Penzance, they don't go. Why should they, when you think about it? Few if any predators left, a bird sanctuary, lots of water and more short grass - and when it gets too cold, as it may occasionally, there are the cooling ponds over at the reactor sites and the steam plant. I remember my mother telling me that she was taught that Instinct was a harsh mistress - when the time came to migrate, migratory birds did just that, and if you caged them they'd beat themselves against the wires (like that depressing Ibsen play). Clearly, nobody told these geese about Instinct...

But the geese at this little park have gone to wherever they spend the winter, and the robins and redwinged blackbirds have gone with them - or when they did - leaving the park to the newcoming cardinals and jays, and the mockingbirds, mourning doves, sparrows, finches, and (of course!) starlings that are always here. Soon the juncos will be showing up, too. I've always loved living where the seasons are marked and distinct, and seeing these birds only part of the year makes them even more pleasing to the heart.