Common Birds XII - Northern Cardinal
A chickadee greets me as I step out of the backdoor: chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee. I know it isn’t greeting me, of course. Chickadees add more dees the more danger they feel. Five is high alert. Nevertheless, this little bird has noticed me and vocalized because it has noticed me, so I will hear it as a greeting. It’s amazing that chickadees count the number of dees like we count the number of tolls of a church bell. The day is crisp and sunny. The clouds are wispy bands, roving high above me. Cardinals sing pew, pew and the song of a red-winged blackbird reverberates in the air. Life is glorious, imminent and transcendent all at once.
There’s a small footbridge, steel with plastic slats. It spans a small streamlet which flows through a tree lined gully down to the stream. Once, probably six months ago now, I saw a raccoon plodding down the small flow. I see its footprints when the water is low enough to bare muddy sandbars in the streamlet bottom. As I cross the footbridge, I hear the periodic chipping of another northern cardinal. I spot him in some brush which often hides a robin. This cardinal is one of the superabundant beauties lavished on the earth. Deep, saturated red feathers cover him from peaked crest to tail, a sharp, black mask framing his eyes and pale red beak. He’s a little wary of me being so close, speeding up his chips and hopping deeper into the brush, but he doesn’t flee. His chipping resumes its unhurried pace as I pass by.
I believe and cherish the belief that the aesthetic preferences, the concern with beauty, of female cardinals leads to the rich red of male cardinals. Over the ages, female cardinals choose the males they find most beautiful and thus their species becomes a work of beauty in the world, appreciated not just by themselves but also by humans like me, my wife, my mom, and my Mamaw. Humans have spent centuries working out beauty on paper, canvas, stone, and staff. Cardinals transform their very bodies to hold beauty. Cardinals, mallards, flowers, insects, trees and countless others all participate in bringing forth living beauty on earth, complementing the extravagant beauty of the non-living: the rush of water over stone, the scattering of light by the molecules and particles of the atmosphere, the procession of the planets, moon, and stars. I love this belief because it suggests that relationships between species are not limited to danger, violence, and conquest, but that we, all life, unbelievably, yet evidently, share a conception of the beautiful. I have the honor of participating alongside all creation in co-creating this beauty.
The stream is slightly frozen in its meanders. Green, green stalks rise out of the water. At the trailhead a goldfinch perches and sings amidst dark red buds. An American robin stands in the grass, feathers puffed against the cold, basking in the strengthening light. Two male mallards feed at the far edge of the pond and chickadees flit over the surface of the water. I breathe in the smell of damp soil. On the wooden footbridge, the river flows by, gently rippling with wavelets. Over the cattail marsh, I see more green stems among the light brown husks and shallow pool. Large, greening, teardrop-shaped leaves unfold from where they used to stand as pointed purple leaves half in the ground. I wish I knew their name. Over the deliberately rising life, a male cardinal flashes, brilliantly, beautiful red.
