This
has been a day of wings. Even before the sun had a chance to burn through the
dawn mist, flocks of Canada geese made their noisy way over my cottage. I stood
on the doorstep in the cool, damp air and listened to what I could not see—dozens
of pairs of beating wings.
The geese are gathering on the pond across the road, feeding and resting and greeting each other after a summer of breeding and raising their young. There are hundreds of them. They rise from the pond on beating wings and splash down again, ducking their heads beneath the water. In the mornings they leave for other ponds, and for fields of cut corn, gleaning spilled kernels to nourish themselves for their flight south. Late in the afternoon and into the early evening they return, great vees of them clamoring and honking, filling the sky with their indecipherable handwriting.
Later in the morning, as I was deadheading the last of the geraniums and clipping the rose bushes, I heard a commotion in the top of the huge cherry tree. Blackbirds were gathering there, and as I watched, hundreds more settled into the surrounding locusts and pines, all squawking and chirping until my ears were full of the sound. Then, at some signal I could not decipher, the hundreds rose as one, and the sound of their wings was like a huge secret whispered to the sky.
The cheerful morning wake-up, wake-up of summer birdsong has been absent now for a month or more. The little birds that winter over, the chickadees, a few starlings, the juncos and nuthatches, twitter from roadside bushes and the branches of the lilac near my door, but morning music is now the provence of the crows and the jays. The crows congregate in family groups, shouting news to one another across the yard or from high in the pine branches. The jay’s call is strident, a sound that cuts through the warm stillness of late afternoon like a squeaky porch swing.
It won’t be long before the sound of wings is gone. The Indian Summer days will pass too quickly, and before we know it, the still, cold days of early November will give way to rain and then to blustery winter winds. Instead of wings, the air will be filled with the whisper of snowflakes. But while the golden days last, I will stand on the doorstep in the dawn and listen to wings I can’t see. I will hoard the sounds of blackbird and goose, of crow and jay, to play back in the deep of December.
The geese are gathering on the pond across the road, feeding and resting and greeting each other after a summer of breeding and raising their young. There are hundreds of them. They rise from the pond on beating wings and splash down again, ducking their heads beneath the water. In the mornings they leave for other ponds, and for fields of cut corn, gleaning spilled kernels to nourish themselves for their flight south. Late in the afternoon and into the early evening they return, great vees of them clamoring and honking, filling the sky with their indecipherable handwriting.
Later in the morning, as I was deadheading the last of the geraniums and clipping the rose bushes, I heard a commotion in the top of the huge cherry tree. Blackbirds were gathering there, and as I watched, hundreds more settled into the surrounding locusts and pines, all squawking and chirping until my ears were full of the sound. Then, at some signal I could not decipher, the hundreds rose as one, and the sound of their wings was like a huge secret whispered to the sky.
The cheerful morning wake-up, wake-up of summer birdsong has been absent now for a month or more. The little birds that winter over, the chickadees, a few starlings, the juncos and nuthatches, twitter from roadside bushes and the branches of the lilac near my door, but morning music is now the provence of the crows and the jays. The crows congregate in family groups, shouting news to one another across the yard or from high in the pine branches. The jay’s call is strident, a sound that cuts through the warm stillness of late afternoon like a squeaky porch swing.
It won’t be long before the sound of wings is gone. The Indian Summer days will pass too quickly, and before we know it, the still, cold days of early November will give way to rain and then to blustery winter winds. Instead of wings, the air will be filled with the whisper of snowflakes. But while the golden days last, I will stand on the doorstep in the dawn and listen to wings I can’t see. I will hoard the sounds of blackbird and goose, of crow and jay, to play back in the deep of December.
5 comments:
Your writing... Sigh. It's a joy to read and a lessen in writing, all in one. Thank you!
Your Nature writing is so evocative - I can always see and hear the scene you describe. Fall is nearly over in my world - scraps of snow linger from an earlier storm and another is on the way.
Barbara - thanks so much :)
Barb - I wish comments on your blog hadn't been closed. I was entranced by your photos - seeing nature through your eyes in such a pleasure!
I saw (and heard) three flocks of geese overhead tonight on my walk, but we never see the huge numbers. We mainly see them as pairs, and then later with goslings, over the summer. Nice writing. All the other bird migrants have left here except the Turkey Vultures.
As always love to read what you are writing. Just came in from having a conversation with the Monarch butterflies still flitting around my flowers. There has been one around all summer (same one? Can't tell), then last week, two. Today, three. I chatted with them and suggested they need to start their migration now and not to be fooled by these deceptively warm days. Not sure they are listening to me, but at least I spoke my mind!!
Watched the blackbirds descend on our trees, our yard, our neighbors' yards the the other day, never see them but I do not laugh remembering when a former neighbor (and a best friend) called me in a panic one day. She had stayed home from work for some reason and when she looked outside to see a sea of black instead of green grass, she was sure she was living in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. To this day the two of us laugh about it, she still is not convinced it is cyclical and not some devilish plan!!
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