For the Birds

We live next door to a nature preserve. We bought our home because of its proximity to the woods, thinking it would be peaceful, but now are awakened each morning by birds yelling at one another. It’s like living in Brooklyn, next door to an avian Ralph and Alice Kramden. When Joan and I lived in the city we were roused by sirens and stereos; now the tufted titmouse and mourning dove disturb our slumber. I don’t know what those doves are mourning, but if they don’t pipe down, I’m going to give them something to mourn about.

A stranger knocked on my door early one morning this past fall. I thought at first he was a Jehovah’s Witness coming to grill me about the Lord. Then I noticed binoculars hanging from his neck and a bird book tucked into his shirt pocket.

“You have cedar waxwings,” he said, pointing to the crabapple tree in our side yard. “They eat fermented fruit and get drunk.”

There is a flock of birdwatchers in my town, and word quickly spread that I had opened my home to the inebriated cedar waxwing. Wherever I went—the grocery store, the coffee shop, the fire department pancake breakfast—bird people would point at me and whisper, “There’s the cedar waxwing man.” Though I have never made the acquaintance of a cedar waxwing, I now feel a certain obligation to them, having their fate so closely tied to mine.

The bird man who knocked on my door now leaves bird literature in my mailbox, most of it prophesying the demise of birds due to reduced habitat, cats, and pesticides. But birds aren’t helping themselves. They are not the brightest of God’s creatures. On a regular basis, cardinals crash into our picture window at top speed, driving their beaks into their brains, giving themselves a bird lobotomy. Cardinals are especially obtuse, the blondes of the bird world. I go outside and watch them lying on the ground. Sometimes they’re only dazed. I stand guard over them until they rise on their own two feet and stagger home. More often than not, they are dead, and I bury them behind the woodpile.

After themselves, birds’ greatest enemy is the cat. My neighbor has a house full of them, who make their way over to my birdfeeder each noonday, like tourists off a bus lining up at Golden Corral. When my wife and I began feeding the birds, we had no idea we’d be feeding the cats, too, but such is the tyranny of the food chain. I phoned my neighbor to ask if she could keep her cats inside, that they were killing my birds. “My little babies?” she said. “They wouldn’t harm a flea.” Cat people never believe anything bad about their cats.

I entered this bird business in a cas- ual manner. The man who had built our house left a piece of wood in the attic of our garage, which I used to make a birdhouse, delighted to be making something for free, not realizing what I was signing on for—the eventual upheaval of my entire life, not to mention possible bankruptcy.

I built the birdfeeder, installed it on a post outside our kitchen window, drove to the Roachdale Hardware, and bought 50 pounds of birdseed.

“Where do you want me to store this birdseed?” I asked my wife, looking around our garage, which was packed to the hilt.

“How about next to the recycling bins?” she suggested.

The recycling bins were overflowing; newspapers were stacked about them in high heaps.

“No room,” I said.

“This garage is a wreck,” my wife observed. “We need to haul some stuff to the dump.”

So I went and bought a truck. It was our third vehicle, and we’re a two-car-garage family, so I hired Charlie Fish to pour a cement slab where I could park our truck. Charlie studied our cracked and crumbled driveway. “What we ought to do is tear out this old driveway and re-pour the whole thing. I mean, as long as we’re here.” That had a certain ring of sense to it, so we did.

I’ve invested a lot of money in these birds, and, quite frankly, they have not repaid my generosity with anything approaching loyalty. They’re just as apt to sing for my neighbor with the killer cats as they are to sing for me. People can talk all they want about the virtues of birds, but I know better. They are ignorant of the finer points of reciprocity and seem casually indifferent to the many sacrifices I’ve made on their behalf. Cardinals still crash into my windows, woodpeckers still air-hammer holes into my clapboards, the tufted titmouse and mourning dove still disturb my slumber. I won’t even mention what they do to my freshly washed cars. Birds are the teenagers of the animal world.

Lest I tar the entire bird family with the same brush, I hasten to add there are some birds I admire. Take the bar-tailed godwit. It flies nine days from Alaska to New Zealand. Nonstop. The longest I’ve ever traveled without having to stop and use the bathroom is three hours. My appreciation for the bar-tailed godwit knows no boundaries.

Every Tuesday morning a number of birdwatchers gather at the nature preserve across the road to spy on birds. I’ve engaged them in conversation several times over the past few years, and they’ve urged me to join their assembly. I’ve resisted because bird-watching strikes me as a voyeuristic enterprise. I wouldn’t want anyone staring at me through binoculars while I was eating or mating. I can just imagine the comments that would generate.

First watcher: I didn’t know he had a potbelly.

Second watcher: Look how much food he spills.

Third watcher: My, he certainly is clumsy.

Fourth watcher: What a slob!

Earlier in my life, I thought I would take up birdwatching when I retired, but finishing my life as a Peeping Tom holds little appeal. I’ve worked hard cultivating my reputation and see no need to jeopardize it by leering at birds.

It’s long past time birdwatchers were exposed for what they really are. The popular perception is that these are harmless, inoffensive people. They have perpetuated that stereotype to keep the rest of us from dwelling more deeply on their motives. I can assure you the birds don’t think it innocent fun. How would you like to be stalked and ogled all day long? Birdwatchers are nothing more than glorified paparazzi, chasing birds from one tree to another.

There is a certain amount of birdism among the birdwatchers I’ve known. I have never heard one boast of seeing a robin or a crow, but let a black-faced spoonbill or a bulo burti boubou bush-shrike fly past, and a birdwatcher will keel over in a dead faint. If they were the advocates of birds that they claim to be, one would be as good as the other.

Between cats, fermented fruit, and prying birdwatchers, birds don’t have it easy. The National Audubon Society estimates there are as many as 200 billion adult birds in the world, but that number is declining. Just this morning, a cardinal flew into the side of my house, which knocks the census down to 199,999,999,999. The woods next door already feels a bit emptier.