A Different Kind of Beauty

This past weekend I participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count, along with thousands of other citizen scientists all across the United States and Canada (with test counts conducted, for the first time, in Central America). For a look at the results, visit the GBBC website at http://birdsource.cornell.edu/gbbc . It was both fun and rewarding to be among the participants, and the data collected is really quite remarkable.

I counted the birds in my yard on all four days. Two of those days I also did counts in other areas of my neighborhood, including the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens, where I was treated to many looks at colorful wood ducks and a beautiful hooded merganser. Even the common mallard looks lovely when the sun shines on his iridescent green and purple head.

While counting birds in my yard, I was sitting in front of the dining room windows in my favorite feeder watching chair with a wool blanket wrapped around me to keep out the cold. I had just reached for my binoculars to check the birds on my thistle feeder in order to make sure that they were all goldfinches, and not pine siskins. As I pulled the binoculars up to my eyes, an adult sharp-shinned hawk flew into view, plucked a goldfinch right off of the thistle feeder, and landed in the tree right in front of my window, where he proceeded to hold the dead goldfinch between his talons and eat it for lunch.

I have a Wing Song monitor, which is an outdoor microphone/indoor receiver which allows you to listen to the birds singing even if you can't have the windows open. The hawk landed less than a foot from my Wing Song microphone, which I had turned on. I love the microphone, because it allows me to monitor the comings and goings of the birds to and from my feeders, even if I'm not right there watching. As I write this, I can hear house finches and a Bewick's wren singing, and a song sparrow in the background, even though I can't see my windows from the computer. It is a great tool for feeder watchers. Even so, there are some things I'd just as soon not have amplified, and a hawk eating a goldfinch for lunch is one of them.

The experience was both horrifying and fascinating. I love hawks, but I will admit that it was disconcerting to watch one devour a songbird right in front of me. I feel the same way when I watch a nature show on television, where they're talking about predators like lions or cheetahs. We've watched a family of lions grow up, and they're getting ready to hunt for the first time. The young cubs take off after a gazelle, and I find myself unsure who to root for. If the lion doesn't eat, the lion will eventually die. If the gazelle doesn't run fast enough, eventually the gazelle will be caught and killed. It's brutal, but it's real.

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