October 6: Edginess

At the field's edge--
restless sparrows rustling
in the dying asters.

November 3: Urban birding

Along the railroad tracks--
squatters' sodden campsites,
white-throated sparrows.

April 24: Lifting rain, birdsong

Rain stopped and the sky began to clear just before sunset. One last tendril of mist floated above Rockport village. When we got home, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet was singing in the yard, its sweet, burbling little song much louder than one might expect from such a tiny bird. On a short walk before dinner we heard other birds singing: cardinal, titmouse, Song and White-throated Sparrows.

Buds on the azalea,
birdsong before dark.
My head grows clearer.

October 2: Sparrow

Walking into my office this afternoon, I was inordinately pleased to hear the call note of a white-throated sparrow from the bushes that border the lawn. For one brief moment I stepped out of work mode and was back on Monhegan, surrounded by the calls of migrating birds... including many white-throated sparrows.

Such power in the chip
of a sparrow,
to summon memory.

June 3: Rain in the spruce forest

This morning I and others led a bird walk for the Acadia Birding Festival on Acadia National Park's Ship Harbor Nature Trail as the rain fell and the tide came in. We could hear waves crashing from beyond the wall of spruce trees, and in the treetops, the tinkling notes of the kinglet's song. Small rafts of eiders rode the swells into the harbor, unbothered by rain, shielded by waterproof feathers. From amid the misty tangle of trees, a white-throated sparrow sang loud and clear. Wet sweet fern, crushed by fingers, seemed particularly pungent. Mosses burgeoned, green sponges massed over the forest floor. Water had formed a small pool at the root base of a fallen spruce, creating a wet cave--what might hide in there? Walking the rain-softened trail, our footsteps were dampened, allowing us to hear well the repeated song of the black-throated green warbler. In the dim light, half-concealed amid wet leaves, the warbler's yellow face shone like a tiny sun.

Raindrops on flat leaves
are easily mistaken
for movements of birds.

May 25: What's with you?

Everyone has their own memory devices to identify bird songs. But what works for one birder might not work at all for another, especially if that other is an older birder who's lost the upper register of his or her hearing and can't hear all the notes of the song. Fortunately, that's not me... yet. I may need reading glasses, but my hearing is still excellent and I do most of my spring birding by ear.

But here's what I'm talking about. Most birders learn the song of the white-throated sparrow as, "Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody." Or, an alternative: "O Canada, Canada Canada." Those long, clear, resonant notes are distinctive in the Maine woods, recognized by most as a sound of summer even if they don't know what the bird looks like or even its name. I, however, was taught as a child by my grandmother that the sparrow is singing, "We're going to have rain"--each word a long, drawn-out whistled note. It was years before I really heard the vibrato that makes those final notes into triplets of sound (like "Peabody," "Canada"), but by then it was too late. The "rain prediction song" was the association irrevocably stuck in my head. (And here in Maine, it's going to rain almost always--so that prediction is usually accurate.)

In many bird books, the song of the chestnut-sided warbler is described as "Pleased, pleased, pleased to meet you!" But I hear, "Hey, hey, hey, what's with you?" As I was walking to my car this afternoon to run an errand, a chestnut-sided warbler sang close by, very loudly. "What's with you?!" he asked, and I found myself musing as I drove to the bank if that was more than a mnemonic. Maybe the world was posing me an existential question through that bird. What is with me? Why am I so tired this week? Is it this blanket of fog? Or something deeper, darker?

Then I laughed.

What's with me? Thinking
the world is all about me.
Birds sing for themselves.