Four Little Birds . . . .

I'm nuts about birds.  Always have been.  And what's not to love about them? 

I mean, they live outdoors.  They sing.  They fly.  And they don't need to buy outfits from Younkers, which just closed, because they are naturally beautiful. 

But, like everything that we love, there comes a time when they break our hearts just a wee.

This is a photo of a Baltimore Oriole (one of my favorite birds) that I saw last spring.  I was on a walk with school friends and the Oriole was in a mid-flight fight with a pesky Grackle.  Seconds later, the two feuding birds swooped low, in front of a car, and the Oriole hit the bumper.  I rushed into the street and nudged the Oriole towards the curb, where it died a few seconds later.  I took a photo of it--lovely and quiet and internally broken--as a kind of witness, I suppose.

We continued our walk and I pretended to be okay, although my mind and heart remained with that lovely, lovely bird, now growing cold on the street behind us.  I hated to think of it deteriorating, alone, on the asphalt, imagining a nestful of babies waiting for their mama.

. . . I'm a lousy faker.

Last weekend, Mark--who encounters creatures of epic proportion out there, where airplanes take off and land--brought home a hummingbird that had died in a hangar. 

My goodness, but she was beautiful.  That luminous coat.  Her tiny feet tucked under her soft, white belly.  And that thread-like tongue, protruding from her beak . . . .

I've been witness to two other lovely, post-mortem birds--an olive-green Ovenbird resting quietly by our sandbox on C Street and a perfect Cedar Waxwing laying on a sidewalk along M Street.

Each of these four birds gave me the chance to lean in and look closely.  In their deaths, I learned more about their lives. 

Holding the Hummingbird, I was taken aback when I parted its breast feathers and saw those tiny, tiny feet.  Leaning over the Oriole, I was mesmerized by the way the colors alternated on its wings.  Gape-jawed and ignorant, I had to hit the books to name that lovely Ovenbird, the only one I've ever seen.  And I don't think I'll ever forget finding the lovely yellow band that ran along the Cedar Waxwing's tail feathers.

I was looking through my address book the other day and found a page filled with bird names.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, next to the list of my human neighbors' names was a list of the birds I've met in my neighborhood since moving here in 2004. 

Both humans and birds have made this a very lovely place to live.