Tag Archives: bird calls

They were Just Talking

Posted on by
15

Digital illustration from a photo: They were Just TalkingI listen to the mourning doves that coo and call in the shadows nearby and think that they do indeed sound ineffably sorrowful. The low, guttural sounds they make seem to my ear quite melancholy and, no matter how musical, to convey a kind of tragic news that makes me wonder just what it is that they say to one another. In my mind, they are exchanging the saddest of sad information, a litany of lachrymose lugubriousness.

In addition, I fear that I don’t give them enormous credit for wit and intellect, so if you’ll pardon the expression, I suspect that what conversation they do have is probably akin to what we American human-types sometimes call pidgin English—any actual content of worth being marred by the lack of intelligible vocabulary and syntax. But, to paraphrase what someone wiser than I has also said, if pigeons are the arbiters of intelligence in the same way that we humans are when we assume ourselves to be the wisest and brightest beings in creation, then all other creatures will by default be found wanting. No wonder the pigeons deign to unload their critiques on the heads of our celebrated effigies in the park.

The truth, I imagine, is that mourning-dove conversation is no less and no more wise and scintillating than our own, at least in the context of pigeon society. Heaven knows that anyone who translated my quotidian chitchat into ‘pigeon English’ would probably be violating the Columbiformian (I just made that up from their Latin name, thank-you-very-much) Geneva Conventions by boring them to death with my inanity and my extreme dull-wittedness when it comes to where to find the best yucky trash to eat, how to maintain the pecking order in the flock, or why one must always look for the shiniest surface on an automobile for proper deposition of one’s automotive excretions. So no matter how tragic the tone of the mourning-doves’ vocalizing sounds to a mere humanoid like me, it could be that they were just discussing their plans for world domination and the swell soirée with which they intend to celebrate it.Digital illustration from a photo: They were Just Talking 2

All Aflutter

Posted on by
6
Photo: Sneaky Bird

Photobombed by some kind of small heron (I think), I didn’t even see this beauty until I enlarged the photo and found it in the very bottom corner of what was already a pretty woodland scene by the beach in Puerto Rico. Sneaky little fella.

Birdwatching was one of those pursuits that mystified me when I was much younger. Ignorant youth! I always appreciated that birds looked pretty in a general way, or were exotic, or sang wonderfully or had intriguing nesting and feeding habits, but I suppose I rarely went beyond that in my appreciation of the creatures.

I can’t even quite say when that shallow attitude deepened. While I’m still far from a skilled or knowledgeable birder, let alone an ornithologist, I think I can claim to have gotten smarter somewhere along the way, to the degree that even in places I visit constantly and expect nothing new, I am almost always on hopeful watch for birds of any kind.

Never mind that I can still misidentify a female Cardinal as a Cedar Waxwing at remarkably close quarters and be endlessly fooled by Mockingbirds‘ varied calls and songs as being other birds’ entirely. I have fallen in love with birds and observation of them much more as I age. Their unique beauties set my heart beating a little bit faster. Opening a window to hear an avian chorus in full and tuneful counterpoint opens my soul as well as my ears. Seeing the characteristic wing shape of a gleaming vulture against the singed blue of the summer sky or the forked feathers on a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher lifts my spirits as though I could launch upward into the heavens as they all do. Now that I’ve ousted my childish casualness toward birds, I don’t want them to leave me behind.

Photo: Shore Bird

Another bodacious birdie from near the Puerto Rican shore.