Common Birds VII - Nuthatches
Two chickadees are in the bushes right outside of the back door. They’re tiny birds, black heads, gray backs, and white breasts. They do the same sorts of things as nuthatches, moving from branch to branch to search for seeds and insects, but while nuthatches are systematic, chickadees move sporadically from place to place. One of the two is on a branch by my feet, hanging upside down to pry at the loose red-brown bark.
The morning is the warmest so far this week. The clouds are the perfect thinness which produces a rainbow ringing the sun. These are sacred days, encircled by God’s promise to the earth. Chipmunks rustle in the retaining wall and a distant blue jay screams. The stream is empty again, but two robins forage though the grass, moving in bursts: three quick steps, listen, three quick steps, listen. I hear song sparrows and red-winged blackbirds.
At the trailhead, a robin and a junco fly from my approach. The robin flies low over the parking lot towards the cattails. The junco flashes its white tail feathers and disappears further into the brush. In the trees I hear more chickadee and the Carolina wren. Then, over my right shoulder I hear a nuthatch calling ack, ack! It is a good day whenever I see a nuthatch. I spot as it flies from tree to tree, crossing the trail. Nuthatches fly like woodpeckers, that is, flying with their wings tucked to their sides like thrown darts, occasionally flicking out their wings to catch themselves. He lands on a spreading branch and spirals around its breadth towards the trunk. All the while it softly calls. Soon, I hear his mate respond, deeper in the woods.
Why do I love nuthatches? Sometimes I think it’s their stickiness, or the way they move through the world, deliberately and repeatedly searching, or their nasal voice. But like all love, it exceeds the sum of its parts. All the specifics that I love merge into a nuthatch quintessence where my love finds its true foundation. But why nuthatches and not juncos, or mourning doves, or red-winged blackbirds? Why did they displace swallows as my favorite birds, and why do they outlast my growing affection for all sorts and conditions of duck? This is still a mystery to me, as love always is. We see a perfection in the mundane which yearns to be made real and which we yearn to see manifest. In love, we see with the eyes of God.
The pond is clear of ice, and the sun dazzles off of the waves entering from the river. Canada geese cry out on their way north to nest in places north of the Adirondacks, my old home. I want to proclaim that it is a good and right and joyful thing always and everywhere to make these specific lives known. Where we can see particular beauty in our beloved, we should share that vision. I hesitate, because I know so much love is misplaced and can be destructive. I think those destructive loves are ultimately centered on the self and not on the beloved, but the human heart is vast. I’m not sure even broad boundaries hold. All the same, for many lives it is right and good and joyful to share what we recognize as beautiful. And few things are as beautiful as this small bird with blue wings and a jet-black cap calling ack, ack as it makes its way from tree to tree.
