Biophilia
Last Monday when I sat down at my desk to write I could hear the black-capped chickadees calling softly to each other as they flitted through the trees. The Western scrub-jays had started a nest. I know this, because the week before they had been courting. I'd see them chasing each other from the top of my apple tree to the top of the Douglas fir in the yard below us, sometimes feeding at a leisurely pace from the platform feeder, sometimes taking turns at the birdbath. Always together. But last week I saw them only singly, and they flew directly to the feeder, eating as quickly as they could, and then flew off again, always in the same direction. I haven't yet found the nest, but that doesn't matter. I don't really want to find it, and risk disturbing them. I know it's there. That's enough.
This is the third year the chickadees and jays have nested nearby. At first I was disappointed that they had chosen to nest elsewhere, and not in the nest boxes I so carefully researched and hung. I've decided that I've gotten the best deal out of the bargain, because although they carefully hide their nests in other yards, they spend only the time it takes to fledge their young there. It is to my yard that they bring their fledglings and spend the day. During the summer months I spend hours watching the young jays learn how to fly from branch to branch in the apple trees. Sometimes they overestimate their skill level and crash into branches they had intended to fly around, and then they stop and perch for awhile, ruffling their feathers with what I imagine to be embarrassment. But they eventually get it right, and fly in big family groups, calling raucously to each other in the summer sun.
The black-capped chickadees also stay in family groups after they fledge, and their soft "zee-zee-zee" calls to each other always sound so peaceful, so congenial. In past years the parents have taught their young how to drink from, and even take little chickadee baths in, the tiny ant moats I've hung above the hummingbird feeder. They're quick to let me know when I let the water level in the moats get too low. Like most of the birds who are regulars in my yard, they have me well trained to do their bidding.
But this Monday the view is different. I've spent the weekend at Timberline Lodge, on the slopes of Mt. Hood, atop the million-acre expanse of Mt. Hood National Forest. My sister-in-law Carol is attending a library acquisitions conference, where she is one of the speakers, and I have come with her to Timberline. As I sit her in the lodge I'm looking out over a view that is still buried under many feet of snow. The only birds readily evident since we arrived on Saturday are ravens, fanning their wedge-shaped tails as they fly in lazy loops, and calling "croonk - croonk" to each other in a voice as ancient as the mist-covered forests over which they fly.
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