5:18 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 48 degrees (mosquitoes slow but determined), wind WNW 0 mph. Sky: short-lived, romantic atmosphere, a soft, most fragile blue-white; clouds washed in rose and peach, margins indistinct, . . . a moment of pastel bliss that quickly grades into the morning. Permanent streams: moving water second fiddle to birdsong, an uninterrupted outpouring of discordant notes. Upper, to my left yellowthroat in a bramble thicket, the five phrases, over and over; to my right house wren in trashy pines, wound tight and effusive, a vocal artillerist. From one bird to the other, I pirouette in the road, leashes wrapping my legs. Wetlands: a band of emaciated ground fog hangs above the marsh; bittern in the reeds, camouflaged—streaked like dried reeds—beige and fawn and tan, yellow eyes and yellow bill a lethal combination, stalking peepers, which compulsively trill. Catbird in the alders, mallard in the main channel, green head gleaming. Pond: apple petals, a recent source of intense beauty, collect along the south shore, sink into muck, another of the year's striations—a gift for a future paleobotanist.
DOR: peeper, spread-eagle.
AOR: robin (always robins), hermit thrush. White-lined sphinx moth on fresh raccoon scat imbibing moisture (and who knows what else). Dogs startle moth. Moth bolts. Shadowfax snaps unsuccessfully. Moth returns to dung, pointed wings up, tongue unfurling like a New Year's Eve party favor, dowses scat for unimaginable treasures. The original water witch.
Three crows, high in the soft sky, head east. Grouse drums. Turkeys gobble. Chickadees and titmice whistle. White-throated sparrows around the pond sing a clipped version of Ol' Sam Peabody, Peabody, those closer to home release the unabridged version (three or more Peabodys). Least flycatcher (FOY) in the thickets along the upper stream, short, snappy, unmusical CHEbek, CHEbek . . . more like an insect than a bird. Warblers: black-throated green, chestnut-sided, yellowthroat, ovenbird, Nashville, redstart, and parula. Red-eyed vireo high in a cherry, unchained melody, kick-starts summer, a four-inch songbird with a penchant for repetition. Treefrogs in aspens, calling. All of a sudden, the world is green and warm, the ground dry, as May slides emphatically toward June.
Rosalie Edge, a woman with a lot of money, patience, and determination, energized friends in Manhattan to buy a ridgeline in the Kittatinny Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania, an "S" curve known as Hawk Mountain. The Kittatinny, the last Appalachian ridgeline before the flat Atlantic coastal plain, is a lodestone for migrating hawks (and many other species). Tens of thousands of hawks, eagles, osprey, and vultures pass Hawk Mountain every fall, birds from as far away as the barren grounds. Men had gathered there for centuries to ambush hawks, a dark tradition with a loyal following. The goal: eliminate birds deemed morally reprehensible. To stop the shooting, Edge bought Hawk Mountain.
Through the years, thank's to the insight of Rosalie Edge, we've made peace with raptors. Now, we go to Hawk Mountain (and elsewhere) to watch hawks pass by, to pay respects to a dramatic and gorgeous force of nature.
When will we give blue jays, crows, shrikes, and house wrens their proper due? We judge these birds by a moral code, best applied only to humans. House wrens punch holes in bluebird eggs and take over the nest cavity. Crows and jays grocery shop in robin and oriole nests. But birds don't kill for fun . . . they kill to survive.
House wren on a limb, singing, dagger bill aquiver. A small bird, big appetite. Disposable energy. Needs a cavity. Needs a home for five or six brown-speckled, dime-sized eggs. House wrens, tree swallows, and bluebirds co-existed in North America for a million years, long before humans stepped out of Africa. Wrens are not grim miscreants or godless demons; they are not vengeful, disrespectful, or blasphemous. House wrens sing and steal with verve, enthusiasm, and an absence of morality. That's a human concept.
Thanks, Ted! And thanks to Ms. Edge!
You're so very right: "Wrens are not grim miscreants or godless demons; they are not vengeful, disrespectful, or blasphemous. House wrens sing and steal with verve, enthusiasm, and an absence of morality. That's a human concept." The universe is amoral, and for some human beings, that is so threatening. And so we sit in judgement on what WE believe is "immoral"--a definition that changes from culture to culture and century to century.
Whitman once again says it for me in the first lines of SONG OF MYSELF 32:
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
The story of the passenger pigeon remains my prime example of human hubris--how fitting that John Muir and Martha, the last passenger pigeon, both died in 1914.
https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/vertebrate-zoology/birds/collections-overview/martha-last-passenger-pigeon
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