The Birds and the Bees
I was contacted recently to participate in the annual Christmas Bird Count. I’m not all that curious about bird censuses, but hey, maybe it’s time I paid a little more attention to my feathered fellow companions here on the nettled South End. After all, we all flock together most days, bumping into each other or giving each other plenty of space. We’re what is called a Backyard Habitat, what I used to call my woods. The birds don’t care what we call it so long as the fruit and berries, seeds and nectar keep them on task. We got so much food these days the hummingbirds stay for the winter, altho … hell if I know how they live through the freezes and still find enough to eat. Probably the neighbors who put out hummingbird feeders with sugar water and apparently anti-freeze when the temperatures drop into the 20’s….
So I wander out for a gander … or at least a look-see. I wander around the yard, down through the orchard, around the shack, back into the woods, back out and up the hill. I hear, but don’t see, two crows exchanging gossip so I diddle around by the rhodies, back through the yard and into the garden, then retrace, slip by the pond and hike up the back way to the house. In twenty minutes of paying a little attention to the bird life around me, I realize there’s no bird life whatsoever around me. None. Zilch. Nada. Zip.
It’s not like we live in the South End Sub-Sahara. It’s not semi-arid or desert. Although it appears to be deserted. All aviary existence has ceased! The birds are gone! It’s like a reverse Alfred Hitchcock, instead of billions of the feathered beasts gathering for the final assault against mankind and those killer cats that prey on them constantly, they’ve simply disappeared. It’s obviously a die-off. I think DDT. Might be. Or a radiation cloud. Those quirky North Koreans at it again, this time killing our birds. Or all those microwave towers, maybe they upped the voltage. Who knows? Who’s investigating? And then I realize, I haven’t seen a car go by. Or a neighbor out in their yard. Or heard a chainsaw in the distance. The world has ended, just me and those two crows left and they’re not talking to me. Or are they?
And of course that’s when it hits me: the birds are like illegal immigrants when the census people come knocking, they don’t want to be noticed, much less interviewed and counted. They’ve hidden in the bush, crawled into their nests, stopped flying, stopped foraging, stopped period. They’ve become invisible to us. They don’t want to be counted!!
Today the count is over. My tally was apocalyptic. Noah could build a pretty small ark if the Flood comes back for my sinner neighbors. I went outside to prune fruit trees today and … well, the birds are back, busy as bees. But wait! Where are the bees????
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