The cats and I were busier than usual this past weekend. I, because I had real office-job-work to do all weekend, plus intermittent snow-shoveling. They, because it was the Great Backyard Bird Count and they had to brush up their ornithology. (Good thing I keep a handsome leatherette Audubon guide under my desk.)
While I scribbled inscrutable notes about antecedent references and triple-negative sentences on print-outs that suffered badly for want of toner, they purred. And dozed. When I moved to the computer desk, they were all attention. Not for me and my typing, of course, but for the relentless flittering of wings just outside the sunroom windows.
The cats were equally uninterested in my snowy good-deed-doing (once I’d restocked the bird feeders). Tiomkin watched some neighborhood children sled down our very gently sloping street, pushing themselves along when gravity wasn’t enough. Ella lounged in the window while flakes fell and my shovel tossed up blocks of snow. I was out of their feline sight-lines while I dug out a path to our neighborhood mailboxes, and therefore out of mind. Furthermore, their curiosity about my performing this service (three times before it finally quit snowing and mild temperatures melted the road clear) only involved the smell of wet boots.
Our contribution to the bird count
Work and shovel-wielding notwithstanding, we saw and registered the following:
- 15 juncos
- 6 chickadees
- a dozen or more bushtits, all in a gang
- 3-4 Bewick’s wrens
- 2 spotted towhees
- 3 Stellar’s jays
- Mr & Mrs Varied Thrush
- 2 nuthatches
- 1 or 2 Townsend’s warblers
- 2 gold-crowned sparrows
- a few song sparrows
- a handful of white-throated sparrows
- 1 rufous hummingbird
That last one, the hummer, was pretty disgusted by the bill of fare. Even though I’d cleared the little blossom feeding-spouts so it could get to the food, it plainly did not care for nectar on-the-rocks.
Between the heaps of work and the hills covered with snow, I missed my usual visit with my mother on the weekend. But huzzah! it was technically a holiday weekend, so Monday, I shoveled the end of the drive one last time and went over for a visit.
Our post-person had got through, as the U.S. Postal Service promises they will, so there were copies of The New Yorker and Cats Magazine for her to enjoy. I told her about the birds and the bird-watching cats, so that got a good laugh. She’s had her second jab of Pfizer* now, so when she tried to tell me about a recent visitor, that’s who I assumed she meant.
But then, as I was wending my way off the snowy deck and back to the driveway, I found a very much flattened snowman in the yard. He would have been right in line-of-sight from the dining room table… I looked back, scratching my head, but mom was just waving and laughing at my puzzlement.
Maybe the snow-fairies, which legend say live at the foot of British gardens, had paid her a special visit. Who am I to say they didn’t? After all, I saw a hummingbird in a blizzard.
And tonight’s news describes a “bird” the size of an SUV has landed on Mars. Who knows what other magic is fluttering just outside our field of vision?
You can discover all the birds in my list by visiting WhatBird.com or the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (as a wing, shall I say, of Mom’s alma mater, it’s a minor beneficiary of her wildlife-oriented giving).
*No side-effects reported, by the way, not even so much as a sore arm, by any of the three elderly ladies or their (much younger!) caregiver.