Bird Years

My mother-in-law, Pat Hoffmann, passed away a few weeks ago. She was the most good-natured and optimistically practical person I ever met. I was lucky in the "in-law" department. Pat and Larry were both alternately helpful advisors, unswerving cheerleaders, jovial storytellers, able role models, willing babysitters, and amiable companions. Pat was 95 when she decided she'd had enough. While I was, of course, sad to say goodbye, I was happy for her to be able to depart on her own terms, peacefully at home in bed surrounded by children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren.

I had known Pat for more than thirty years, and yet I'm still well short of her age when we met. That age disparity has danced in and out of my thoughts these past weeks. It has been a very significant period for me. So many monumental experiences and people have transformed my life. I completed my collegiate education and pursued a more or less successful career as a museum curator and then exhibit developer, traveling across the country to learn about aspects of our natural and cultural history that have continually stretched my mind and reshaped how I think about the world. Much to my ongoing delight, I have learned to write and play music, first on the piano, but over the last decade, more and more on guitar and other assorted instruments. Most significantly, I have enjoyed the sweetest relationship with Diane, my wife and dearest friend. Together we have raised Lara and Collin and watched them grow up and leave the nest to continue their own journeys.

That all feels like a lot. Like I should be tired now and ready for a nap. And yet I still have nearly a decade before I even reach the Pat Era. I know from my studies that we humans have assigned many names to the various stages of our psycho-social development. We go through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age. We progress through various fixations, physical and mental challenges, emotional and hormonal peaks and valleys. I was expecting or at least half-expecting most of them, even the mid-life hoohah that I went through about ten years ago. But it feels to me like this current stage may have gotten short shrift in the literature. I had started referring to it as "the long grey" but now that feels too large, like there are some definite increments of time within that period yet to be fully cataloged—the name that name phase, the sleep interruptus phase, the over that or done with them phase, the days-of-the-week pill bottle phase.

Currently, we're in the Bird Years. Both our cats passed last summer. We loved them, and they both led mostly happy, comfortable lives sleeping on our furniture, eating premium cat food, shedding on our furniture, yakking up premium hair balls, scratching our furniture, and peeing on our premium carpets. We were glad to have them, but we won't be accepting any more applicants. Now we're watching the birds. I can't say when it began. We've always kept gardens, and for years we've noticed various cardinals, robins, bluejays, chickadees, wrens, goldfinches and other songbirds frequenting the yard. Summertime blooms attract astonishing hummingbirds and the tap-tap of pileated woodpeckers echoes along the ridge.

Not too long after the last cat departed, the first bird feeders went up. Hung from a pear tree within view of the living room windows, we watched squirrel after squirrel climb, dangle, and pillage. They did not mourn the cats and hailed the onset of the Bird Years with great affection. Last summer, a new squirrel-proof bird feeder—a Mother's Day present—hit the yard. The squirrels were unable to breach its defenses, but it hardly matters, as the birds that feed above them are surprisingly sloppy eaters. I estimate that they drop as much as they eat. Easily half of every 50-lb. bag of bird seed I lug home from the garden center still goes to the squirrels. Every sunflower seed extracted from the little feeder holes from someone standing on the perch sends a little shower of lesser seeds down below. The morning doves and starlings, too big for the perches, spend most of their time grazing on the lawn (along with the quite healthy squirrels).

Instead of taking photos of the napping cats, we now have photos and videos of the birds. The cardinals, especially, are quite striking in the winter when their brilliant red feathers stand out against the stark white snow. But the birding doesn't stop with the yard. On car trips, we're spotting red-tailed hawks along the highway. Along the bike trail, we keep a lookout for red-winged blackbirds in the tall grass, bluebirds in their little bluebird houses, great blue heron fishing along the sandbars, and the occasional osprey dive-bombing the river for dinner. A few weeks ago, a mother bob-white tried to con us into believing she was injured to draw us away from her nest. She doesn't know who she's dealing with. We watch David Attenborough, sister!

Last year we also discovered the bird cams. OMG! If you're looking for a way to lower your professional productivity... A pair of bald eagles raised a pair of awkward, gangly youths in a nest in the Washington, D.C. area last year, and they're back at it again this year. At Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, they maintain links to birdcams all over North America, sending back live footage of barn owls, barred owls, ospreys, red-tailed hawks, petrels, albatrosses, manakins, and any number of pond-frequenting winged creatures. Many of these birdcams show parents raising little ones. A warning alerts viewers that these are live, unscripted birdcams where anything can happen. Diane grew a little too attached to the Texas barn owls last summer. When a drought in the region triggered a food shortage, the older/larger siblings took to eating their nestmates. It was a last man standing situation. Diane was appalled.

I can't really remember when we started paying attention to the birds. Is it just a symptom of being settled in this home now all these many years? We don't go out as much. We don't have kids to run around. We're up with the sun, awake when the birds are going about there morning routines. Is it the cumulative impact of oh so many nature documentaries illustrating with increasing technological precision the behaviors of the wild and not-so-wild creatures with whom we inhabit this planet? Or is it a sign that we're calmer now, more mature, more mindful and attuned to our environment. Sure. Let's go with that.

Our children, as children are prone to do, make fun of this recent bird fixation. They act like we're one step closer to the old bird watcher's home, which, maybe we are, but hey, back to the Tim/Pat age disparity, that frail walker-assisted trip might still be decades from now. How much will we have learned about our winged neighbors by then? How much will we remember? And are there other mini-stages between here and there that I've still not guessed at? Misadventures in woodworking? Arrowhead collecting? Genealogy? The Chemo Two-step? The Colon Years?

We arrived home from Pat's funeral last week to discover that a robin had become the first to build a nest in the young Japanese maple in our front yard. A Wisconsin farm girl, Pat had always been on the lookout for robins as a harbinger of spring. My sister says that it's a message from beyond. I don't know about that, but it feels like a good sign.