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Through a Different Window

© Terrie Murray

At least it has stopped raining, and my nose isn't dripping anymore. In fact, it is a spectacular autumn morning. I'm writing today at Multnomah County's Central Library, where I've been accepted into a sanctuary room for writers called the Sterling Room. It's a beautiful place, with oak desks and paneling, and a window which looks out onto elm trees which have turned golden since I was here last week. Because the elms are fully mature, and over 100 feet tall with wide, spreading branches, I've seen many different birds here than the ones I see out my backyard windows at home. Last week I saw what I'm pretty sure was a northern gyrfalcon. It was a pale hawk with a strongly barred tail. I know a gyrfalcon was spotted here last winter, so I'm fairly confident in my identification. What a beautiful bird!

There are also yellow-rumped warblers in the elms. I have only seen a few, but their "butter butts" are strongly diagnostic. Black-capped chickadees are chasing each other through the falling leaves this morning, and a downy woodpecker is hunting for bugs hidden underneath the bark. Ruby-crowned kinglets hover off the edges of leaves and branches, searching for tiny bugs. Once, a couple of years ago, a research librarian working in this very room spotted a barred owl in the branches of this same elm. She phoned Harry Nehls, who is Portland's "rare bird alert" guru. Harry posted the sighting to the Oregon Birders On-Line e-mail group, and within an hour there were at least 20 of us standing on the library steps, observing this rare owl (rare for western Oregon, anyway). Although it hasn't been seen since, I can't help myself from looking for it every time I glance out the window.

Although technically I'm here to work on my novel, which is a historical piece set during the California gold rush (entitled "Lindy's Gold" -- watch for it!), it's hard to turn off the birder in me and concentrate on novel writing. Especially when the sky is blue and the leaves are golden and the birds pull my focus away from my novel's characters.

Just as it is good sometimes to get away from the house and all the distractions there in order to focus on writing, sometimes it is good to study birds other than those in your backyard. The window here in the Sterling Room is probably ten feet by fourteen feet, and I'm guessing that by the time I'm finished with "Lindy's Gold" I'll have watched the elm tree change many times with the seasons. Within a week or two it will have shed its leaves, and more than likely I'll see snow accumulate on winter-bare branches in the colder months ahead. I'll watch the leaf buds swell and burst into pale green in March and April, and then darker green with the abundance of summer. The birds, too, will change with the seasons. Right now I'm seeing winter migrants and year-round residents. Later in the winter I expect to see more hawks, as they move into the valley for the season. In the spring more warblers will arrive, and the residents will begin to nest, right here among the elm branches out my window.