Today I was thinking about my grandmother’s birds.  Birds were a big deal to her.  You could never get far in a conversation with her without hearing about the birds.  “Well the pair of red birds I’ve been seeing haven’t come around today so maybe they’ve taken off” she would say.  Or the wrens were always a big topic, or the doves.  Doves are different because they are more ground orientated (like quail) and if anybody is going to be in pairs it will be doves.  There are times when you would find a lone dove but rarely.  Doves would also make lovely cooing noises, very soothing, unlike the obnoxious screech of a blue jay.  In the chatter of a backyard of a melting pot of different birds you start to hear each distinct sound and who it’s coming from.

If there is any skill set that an ADD induced kid addicted to their iPad can benefit from is the power of observation taught by grandmothers who bird watch.  This requires extreme focus, sometimes with greatly delayed reward.  “Look for the little wrens!” Me Ma would order when I was a kid.  Wrens were hard because they are small and even the males are brown so they blend in with the environment and other birds.  I would look and easily spot a bright red bird or even the breast of a robin but sometimes struggle to see the wrens.  Sometimes they weren’t there and you had to wait.  But being that seeing certain birds made my grandmother happy I would be pleased to discover them as I lived to see her face light up as it did when her birds showed up…sometimes.  Because sometimes I would gleefully point out the wrens and she would come rushing to the backyard sliding glass door only to say in supreme disgust, “No, those are sparrows”.  Sparrows are the assholes of the bird world, the weeds in the gardens of birds you want to nourish and support.  And sparrows look a lot like wrens.  

Because my grandmother was so bird obsessed the whole family got involved.  We would buy her bird books so she could identify the occasional unusual migrant bird who came to feed or drink on its way to warmer climates in Mexico.  One time a bright tropical bird showed up that stayed for weeks that she eventually figured out must have been someone’s pet parrot that escaped as the only bird in the bird book that looked like it was from South America. We would buy her various birdhouses (decorative and ones for use) and in the 90s that wall clock that was so popular on TV and in catalogues that had a different bird for each hour that would make the distinct tweeting sound every hour for its breed that would always confuse my grandmother (for years) as she thought it was one of the birds outside that was chirping (until her hearing got so bad that she couldn’t hear it anymore).  We would buy her airtight containers for her bird feed, and of course we all helped out in driving to the local feed store or hardware shop to pick up chicken scratch and black oil sunflower seed.  This was never in small bags mind you but in bulk, and it was usually 50 pound bags so I would either drive my truck or her truck to go get it.  

In the later years not only could Me Ma not drive but she couldn’t walk either she was so crippled by arthritis. It took up until near the end before she went into a nursing home but it got to the point where she couldn’t even get outside to change out the feeders and fill up the bird baths as walking alone was difficult nevermind reaching up for feeders or hauling water hoses while trying to grip a walker.  So we would do it for her when we were there.  

You learn a lot about the nature of man by the actions of birds as all the same instincts and threats are there.  Bluebirds would build a nest and lay eggs and then a sparrow or mockingbird would come and peck the babies to death and then take over the nest with their own babies.  The biggest threat to the birds in my Me Ma’s yard were the large numbers of feral cats that came and went.  My Me Ma lived in town but her property sat on 5 acres so there were woods back behind her property that wild animals would trek through.  Her backyard dedicated to the thriving of birds was also very attractive to predators of birds (and as a side note also to pests like squirrels and raccoons).  It was not unusual to be bird watching for the wrens, and then hear excited chatter of the birds as a warning call before some cat would come pouncing out of the shadows and grab a helpless bird.  With cats the birds would typically chatter in warning.  With snakes they would grow dead silent and disappear.  Sometimes we would fill the feeders and the bird baths and no one would immediately come.  Silence.  What was lurking in the shadows or under the leaves that we didn’t see? Birds are also like humans in that birds of a feather flock together.  Sometimes we would fill the feeders and huge flocks of birds would alight row after row and happily stuff their faces together while a lone weirdo bird would keep trying to alight over and over again to feed too only to not find a spot where it belonged so it would finally give up and fly away. 

When my grandmother got moved into a nursing home a couple of years ago she was put in a bed by a window.  We offered to put up a feeder for her outside the window but she refused saying nobody would consistently be able to keep it filled.  I’m not sure if that’s the real reason but every time I visit her the blinds are firmly shut and if I try and open them she gets figity and has me shut them again.

She doesn’t look outside into the world or at the birds anymore.