I wouldn’t call myself a birder per se. If I was a birder that would mean that I travel with long checklists and binoculars and own a dust-coloured vest with lots of little pockets and can tell the difference between a common redpoll and a hoary redpoll (but I can’t).
But I do like birds, and we spend a lot of time watching the characters in the backyard. Maybe this is why I’ve developed a bit of an ear for birdsong. I can recognize a hubbub when I hear one.
I could tell that something was up with Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal (this is how we refer to any cardinals we meet) so I grabbed my coffee and went for a walk around the backyard.
Our backyard is very much its own little world. Everything is incredibly overgrown right now and it is very shaded and cool there this time of the morning.
I felt like I was in a great big room surrounded by great thick living breathing walls.
I picked a small handful of black raspberries, thorns plucking at the sleeve of my thin jacket, and ate them all at once.
My shoes were getting wet. The grass was still covered with dew. The hostas were heavy with beads of water. Great branches closed in overhead.
I wandered among the green taking it all in, trying to still my mind, but that incessant chirping wasn’t letting up.
Then I saw the flash of red. Mr. Cardinal. I followed him with my eye and found the source of the desperate-sounding birdsong. Daddy was feeding his fledgling baby, and it was the little one who was doing all the fussing.
Very cute, but hasn’t anyone told him about the neighborhood cats?
