Out There: Rest Stop

The birds are leaving. The birds are arriving. Fall migration season is underway.

Most of it happens overnight. We go to sleep with certain birds and wake up to different birds. I check the Cornell Lab’s Migration Tracker every morning to see how many migrating birds flew over the Highlands overnight (62,300, give or take a goose). When I can’t sleep, I check the live data feed and slip to the porch and the cacophony of crickets. I crane my neck and imagine thousands of birds flying overhead in the darkness. Songbirds, in particular, migrate at night.

Migration takes energy, which made me wonder if I should fill the feeder. Food is scarce in the winter, but because they can attract bears in the spring and summer, I’ve kept mine empty. As a result, the yard was quiet, except for the gray catbirds that spent the summer screaming at me. Those birds should be in the process of migrating south, but because our winters are getting warmer and shorter, they have been sticking around. Thanks for nothing, climate change.

What to do about refilling the feeder? Was it too soon? Will I wake up to bears in my kitchen? I couldn’t get an answer either way from the experts, so I chose abundance. 

I refilled the feeder and set up a new birdbath, by which I mean a leftover plastic takeout container from the Adams Fairacre hot bar. It’s not fancy, but it fit the bill as something I can easily empty and refill every morning, so it doesn’t become a breeding pool for mosquitos. It’s also something already in my house. I placed the feeder 5 feet to the right of a table on the porch where I like to work and the birdbath 5 feet to my left and waited.

It was quiet for about a day until word got out that the buffet had reopened, and the yard exploded. Now, the air is filled with the chorus of chickadees, the trill of carolina wrens and the guttural growl of crows. At one point, I kept hearing what sounded like the shriek of a tiny hawk. The app on my phone that identifies birdcalls couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, I realized it was coming from a squirrel hunched in the crabapple tree that looms over the bird feeder. Had it learned how to imitate a hawk sound to scare birds away from the feeder? Was I reading too much into it?

There is always a danger in anthropomorphizing animals because we can misinterpret their behavior. But I wonder if there’s a danger in not anthropomorphizing them enough. As the yard has gotten busier this week, and the weather has been perfect for long work sessions on the porch, the animals coming to the feeder and the birdbath have become less timid. I can walk around and even wave my arms, and they don’t fly away. Sometimes they perch on the table, inches away, and stare at me. 

Are they thanking me? Sizing me up? Curious? Will there be bears? Should I get a birdbath that isn’t giving birds a helping of microplastics?

I still don’t know. But the porch is filled with life and noise all around. One must imagine the birds happy.