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When it rose to 53°F in the April sun there was still some suet in the three suet feeders, the suet softening in the sun and warm wind, and there were still blackoil sunflower seeds settled in the two red-painted, wooden birdfeeders – the hanging platform feeder and the hanging tray.
From my normal place, looking out a small north-facing window and craning a bit, I could see one of the suet feeders hanging in a balsam fir. If I moved more there was the red platform hanging on the shepherd’s staff over the black compost of the wildflower bed. Up fully and to the window showed the red tray hanging high off the shed, and a suet feeder off that, and a ragged thistle sock. And to the left a suet feeder hanging from a 6-foot cage caging a browning white pine three foot tall.
There were no birds. Not even a chickadee. Not even the mother red squirrel. The birds were off doing spring things now that spring had thawed. They had moved on and moved out and moved away.
Why would all the birds – every bird – eschew the suet and seeds freely offered? Why would the red squirrel stop storing and storing and storing?
I walked out in the yard among the sprouting tulips and crocus and irises and the budding blueberries, and I generated many hypothesis-type theories…
Maybe the chickadees’ metabolism changed beyond winter, maybe it lowered. Maybe they didn’t need to eat three times their bodyweight a day. Maybe with the warmth of spring came the grubs, beetles, ants, or whatever the woodpeckers lived on in the tall deep woods. Maybe the birds were across the road in the great meadow, the old dead grasses and wildflowers revealed now from the snow, and the birds were in amongst the scattered grains of the grasses and the seeds of the wildflowers. Probably many birds were on the new bare ground off a ways where I had sown my own native grass and wildflower seeds, there robbing my seeds, stealing my colorful summer. Certainly, many of the birds were out on the road gathering grit – so desperate to come by through the winter – in the drying, sandy, gravelly places. And I suppose the red squirrel got warm air in her nose and harsh sun in her eyes and thought with a blink, I no longer need to store, store, store.
Then it snowed. I had four inches over here. And suddenly – like one day the rivers are uninhabitable and the next day all the steelhead are there, or like one day the brambles are bare red stalks and the next day the wild raspberries have gone leafy-green – suddenly, the juncos had parachuted in. The slate juncos that I had not seen in so long.
Then it froze and the suet solidified, and dozens and dozens of juncos worked the suet and the sunflower seeds in the tray. I emptied the hanging platform of snow and then filled it with seeds. And one or two chickadees came back. Then sparrows – either house sparrows or tree sparrows or English sparrows. Later, one nuthatch. Then a bunch of small birds that I thought were flycatchers, but they were eating seeds and suet.
Hanging from the hanging suet there were the downy woodpeckers, and the hairy woodpeckers three times their size. Finally, some outstanding color with the reddish pinkish purple pine siskin.
And a grackle! How many years since I saw the green and purple sheen of a grackle! Ha, the suburbs of my childhood.
And two red-winged blackbirds! How many years since I saw the red and yellow shoulder patches. Ha! The cattail swamps of my youth.
Also, yes, the red squirrel, taking the lion’s share of everything again, colored the color of a dying evergreen.
It went on for days and days when April was more like February and March. And as the many dozens of juncos scratched and pecked at the seeds falling from the feeders, they managed to work all the way down through the snow to bare, thawed earth. And into those black patches of earth under the feeders amongst the white snow flew two Northern flickers!
And then I came up with some scientific theories – truths based upon a collection of facts:
Sometimes it takes manageable adversity – an April snowstorm or clipper – to bring life back.
And scarcity and needs drive us to arrive at a place, and the lack of them drive us away.
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