Go Outside and Watch Some Birds

I’ve been meaning for a few days to write this response to my good friend Evo, who published a very dark, disturbing post recently. Apparently, he’s been going through a rather bleak period, “filled with gloom.” Unfortunately, this is not a one-time event for him; he has regular bouts with what I’d characterize as cosmic angst. Some, maybe even much, of his problem is medical, and he says so. But a small part of it, I think, is philosophical.

In his post, Evo contemplates the awful eventuality of death and mutability. He asks how we can carry on, given the knowledge that we’ll ultimately be consigned to the dustbin of history. That’s a burdensome knowledge, and there are days when I, too, find it overwhelming. In my opinion, you’d have to be an idiot not to be troubled by the fact that you will, someday soon in the grand scheme of things, cease to exist.

There’s no life after death. The opera, ideally, is a long one, but it will come to an end. It may not be over until the fat lady, Death, sings; but when she does, it’s done. The music is finished and it’s time for everyone — except the corpse — to go home. I’m depressing myself just thinking about it.

Anyway, in what may have seemed like a flippant answer, I advised Evo to “go outside and watch some birds.” I meant it seriously, though, because that’s always a joyful experience for me, maybe the most innocently agreeable, life-affirming thing I can think of to do. The wonders of evolution surround us. Humans aren’t special; we’re part of an entire world that’s breathtaking to behold. And nature becomes much more awe-inspiring when you don’t fool yourself into thinking that some divine hand designed it especially for you. The myriad variety of life is mind-boggling precisely because it wasn’t planned. No gods gave us the multitude of bird species; natural selection did. The amazing thing is that we’ve been evolutionarily “programmed” to recognize the simple pleasures of watching other living things as they go about their business — of living.

So I was having a fairly down afternoon myself, sitting at my computer and silently bemoaning the fact that, as I get older, hardly a day goes by when some part of my body doesn’t ache. I never made that fortune, never became famous, never got as learned as I thought I would. And when I look in the mirror, yikes! I see my own grandfather.

But spring has just about arrived where I live, and the birds are busy. My yard and the nearby thicket is filled with them. Our ten or eleven feeders are doing their job, attracting many of my favorites. A good friend phoned today and I decided I’d talk to him from my screened-in porch. Being a good friend, he has a vocabulary not unlike mine, and it didn’t take him long to interrupt the conversation to say, “Holy shit! It sounds like you’re in the middle of a fucking aviary.” And he was right.

Titmice calling for “Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter.” Cardinals proclaiming “What cheer! What cheer!” Carolina wrens asking to be recorded on “video, video, video.” A score of goldfinches signaling to one another that they had the munchies: “potato chip, potato chip, potato chip, potato chip.” Somewhere in the trees a great-crested flycatcher, the first of the year, whooping it up: “wheeeeep, wheeeeep.” Mourning doves flying over to the birdbath, their wings whistling as they took off. A pileated woodpecker gleefully cackling in the distance. A trio of prissy fish crows flying overhead, telling each other, “uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh.” A barred owl rousing himself way too early to wonder “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?”

And the colors, flitting and fluttering here and there, making abstract pictures in the trees for someone like me, lucky enough to be nearsighted when he lowers his binoculars. The deep red of male cardinals. The blue of jays. The bright yellow of American goldfinches coming into their seasonal plumage. The Crayola box of painted buntings with reds and blues and greens in assorted shades.

At about three o’clock, a red-shouldered hawk landed on an extremely thin branch of a naked sycamore near the back of my house. He was relatively small for the species: a male, no doubt. He widened his tail and pumped it up and down a few times, trying to catch his balance, while the other birds, suddenly confronted with the possibility of a swift and unexpected death, flew into the thicket, a short but safe distance away. The bravest of the cardinals and goldfinches peeked out from time to time to see what the hawk was up to. Not much, as it happened. After a few minutes of watching the ground — waiting hopefully for some rodent to come for the spilled seed, although none did — he coursed away.

In less than ten seconds, everybody was back at the feeding posts. A lone jay perched not far from where the hawk had been, and imitated his call: keeeee-yer, keeeee-yer. It was a pretty good performance, but no one was fooled. The bird-ensome knowledge that they would soon be consigned to the dustbin of history had passed once again.

For me, too.