Take a moment, look out the window

Take a moment, look out the window

Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Christopher Guerin

There’s so much despairing talk about the environment and the ongoing diminishment of nature these days, I want to take a few minutes to glory in what we still have — in particular, our bird life. It’s a glorious spring day in Indiana and our three crab trees are in bloom. As we’ve been feeding birds for 25 years in our backyard, my wife and I enjoy the same visitors every year at this time.

This morning we had a huge Brown Thrasher (he looks like a smaller, less leggy version of a Roadrunner) right up by the house, when we normally only see him way in the back of the yard.

We’ve also this week seen the return of the Gray Catbirds who’ll be with us for the rest of the summer, and heard the haunting piping of a rust-capped Chipping Sparrow, a bird it took us three years to figure out was actually the one singing a song that has come to define the advent of spring for us. Early this morning, there was a loud thump on the window in the den and, as has happened many times before, I found a dazed Mourning Dove sprawled below. He revived in a few minutes and flew away.

The other birds visible in the back yard as I write this include Goldfinches, Tufted Titmice, Cardinals — there’s one nesting in a bush not five feet from my writing desk, which is why I’m writing on the couch — Starlings and Robins. Any day now the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak will stop for a day or two — he came on April 31st last year and May 7th the year before. (Last year, the Brown Thrasher came a year ago tomorrow.) Last week a Hermit Thrush came by ten days later than last year. A Carolina Wren should be here in two or three weeks. Yet to come for the whole summer are Black-capped Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and, my wife’s favorite, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

On our walk yesterday, we saw a Cooper’s Hawk being hounded by a Sparrow and on my bike ride this morning I heard three Red-bellied Woodpeckers and an Eastern Bluebird flew right past me on its way into the woods. And, two weeks ago, my daughter and I came upon maybe 15 Cedar Waxwings gobbling red berries in a nearby park. We went back the next day and the Waxwings, and all the berries, were gone.

So, take a moment, look out the window.

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Christopher Guerin

Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.