Bird Watching for Beginners

      My husband handed me a large lightweight box to open on Christmas morning and for once he had me stumped. I hadn’t asked for anything in particular and I couldn’t imagine what he’d put under the tree.

When I peeled away the wrapping paper I saw it was an oversized finch feeding station, three long tubes dissected by perches for 24 birds. The big station made the individual feeders I already had hanging--each with no more than 6 perches--look ridiculously small. He helped me fill the tubes with the Nijer seed and with my son's help hung it from a branch in the tree outside the big front window of our Cape Cod cottage. They teased me about the possibility of ever seeing it full of birds. 

But the next morning, as light began to filter through the darkness, I was up and I looked out the front window. There were already a few visitors to the feeder—the proverbial early birds—and by the time the sun was completely up, what sun there was on such a cold grey winter day, there was a busy goldfinch or pine siskin on every perch with at least another dozen flitting around the tree waiting for a turn or trying to bully someone into abandoning their spot.
    
Snow began to fall, drifting into soft piles on the limbs, and the tree was alive with tiny, hungry, beautiful birds.
   
One by one as my son and daughters, home for the holiday, woke up and made their way downstairs, they walked by the window and stopped to comment on what was going on in the branches. Their delight mirrored my own.

On New Year’s Eve we discovered the small frozen body of a bird beneath the feeder. I don’t know if it succumbed to the bitter cold or was the victim of a predator, maybe it died of old age, but after a holiday season that was marked by our family’s own loss, the tableau at the feeder just outside the window was a reminder that life can be unfair, and that even when there’s enough for all, not everyone is strong enough to survive.
    
Now, weeks into the new year, with everyone back to work or away at school I have the house to myself and the birds, the finches, iskins and chickadees are still busy in the tree. They are good company.
   
Writing is a solitary occupation. Most of my work is done alone in a quiet house. The quick, determined movement of the birds as they feed is a welcome distraction when I look up from my computer. Off and on throughout the day I find myself standing in front of the wide north-facing window in my living room, a hot cup of tea in my cold hands, daydreaming as I watch the birds fly in and out of the tree.
    
It is not lost on me that what I am enjoying is actually their struggle to survive. The need to fuel the constant movement that keeps them warm. their constant vulnerability to cats and other predators that stalk and hunt them, mocks my search for the right word or anxiety about meeting some kind of trivial deadline.
     
Every day I watch the birds and they keep a wary eye on me as I stand at the window. And the fluttering on either side of the glass is really nothing more than the work of getting up and going on.
   
Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Falling into Winter

I was standing on the walkway in front of my house, watering the climbing roses that grow along the big front window, when I began to pay attention to a particular sound. I couldn't quite place what I was hearing. It was like raindrops but the sky was big and blue, without a cloud. It was like a wave of applause, but I was alone on the street. 

Still listening,  I stopped and looked around and realized it was the sound of leaves falling. Not just a few autumn leaves, drifting lazily down to the ground. It was a shower of big, curling, gold leaves from the towering horse chestnut trees on the corner. 

There was no wind to shake them free, but one after another the leaves on the uppermost branches simply let go, dropping straight down with purpose, sometimes knocking down leaves on lower branches as they went.

I stood where I was for a moment, struck by the show. The cascade of broad papery leaves increased as more and more leaves fell to the ground.

It was as if the big trees had simply shrugged them off, like weary mothers tired of clinging leafy children. 

The spiked husks holding the smooth brown chestnuts had already fallen and for weeks the squirrels had been busy, running across wires overhead, holding the prize in their mouths as they hurried back to the cache with more provisions for winter. I'd watched them bury chestnuts in my flower beds and in the potted plants around the patio. We’d gathered a big bowl to put out as squirrel treats in the deepest part of winter, to make amends for the nuts I’d taken out of the pots on the patio.

All that remained of the trees' industry of spring and summer and early fall--the unfurling of soft green, the messy blooms, the abundance of chestnuts--were the golden leaves. And now, one after another they fell from the branches and collected around my feet. 

I pulled my phone from my pocket and recorded a short video, a private movie of a splendid moment. 

How often had I looked up and commented that the trees seemed to have shed their leaves overnight. One day the canopy of color was there and the next it was gone. 

I felt fortunate, as is so often the case with nature, to have been in the right place at the right time to see something beautiful. In just minutes, the branches were bare with only the most tenacious leaves left behind. All was quiet again. 

I could imagine each tree heaving a great sigh. Her work was done for the year. Now she could rest. Now she could sleep.  

The calendar might disagree but I could not argue with what the trees were telling me. Fall is over and winter is coming. 

I walked back to my own yard, back to the roses, kicking at the leaves on the ground just to see them to scatter, and I thought about the things we see and the things we miss as we go about our day.

Before long the city's sweepers will scour the street and take away the litter of leaves. One morning, any day now, the gold will be gone and we will wake to the season's first snow, to a dusting of winter white on bare black branches. 

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com