A Grosbeak Paean

I wanted to write an elegy, a serious reflection on watching a black-headed grosbeak die on my porch. There was the thud, and the plop, and the ruffles, not to mention the tiny yellow feathers, when the bird hit the window. There were my exclamations and futile attempts to call a bird rescue center, if one even existed in my mountain town. But mostly there were the painful seconds and minutes that slowly ticked as the grosbeak stopped its desperate attempts to fly and succumbed to whatever serious internal injuries it suffered when it thought the bright reflection of my forested front yard was a safe space to fly and feed and live out this part of its summer.

As I grasped for an appropriate funeral and as if on queue, the Laurel and Hardy of my yard, an acorn woodpecker and a Woodhouse's scrub jay, appeared on the scene to distract me. The clownish woodpecker squawked because it wanted to feed on suet, the smart aleck jay squawked because it wanted one more peanut handed out, and then the flustered woodpecker squawked yet again because it remembered, "That's MY peanut, give it back!" Their comedy routine was a sweet attempt to cheer me up, and the conceit, a pitiful idea I clutched for strength.

I decided to lay her corpse - I'll call the bird a she, as she was either that or an immature male, not showing his jet black and cinnamon-orange breeding plumage - on a nearby rock so she'd dissolve into the dusty, brittle remains of my scrub oaks' leaves while the last beams of the setting sun illuminated her. But nature doesn't work as easily as a Bible verse, so I gave her soft, broken body a proper burial beside a freshly planted Arizona cypress tree early the next morning.

I thanked her over and over for the joy she and her kind brought to me and to anyone who'd listen to my stories about nature. Ever since I started paying attention to migratory birds, I noticed something different about the black-headed grosbeak. I guess this is where the story becomes a paean, and my grief will find comfort in the praise I give a bird.

I can't get my mind off a certain ebony-faced bird that was at my feeder just minutes before and only feet away from the accident site. Whether he was the same bird as last year and the same as the year before that, I can't be certain. But I fantasized that this male really was the same trusting, familiar individual, a brave migratory bird just beginning his annual visit to my yard and my neighborhood. I even started to call him, and any distinctive male for that matter, Baja, conjuring an image of him in his winter home somewhere near San Jose del Cabo or Todos Santos far south of the border.

I'm convinced this handsome bird saw the tragedy unfold on my deck, as he witnessed the demise of an offspring or, God help me, a mate. As careful as he already was to approach the steady supply of seeds, such a shock had to set off a tsunami-sized alarm of panic.

In the month since the accident, I've not seen any black-headed grosbeaks in my yard, and certainly no Baja at the feeder. The friendly staff at the local feed store assure me that the birds are busy mating, nesting and raising their young. Besides, they say, it was a cool, wet spring that nurtured plenty of natural food in all the woods and forests where the grosbeaks like to breed.

Meanwhile I've noticed a pair of summer tanagers occasionally flying through my yard's high ponderosa pine trees. The male is a striking scarlet and the female a flashy yellow. And up the street, I've observed a blue grosbeak, and like his name describes, he's a brilliant azure.  Joining the black-headed grosbeaks, they're all colorful seasonal visitors from the tropics.  So migrants are still in the neighborhood, but they seem so far away, sequestered in the treetops, safe away from my house and even my zoom lens.

Did I just see Baja observing my yard and my deck and my seed feeder from a not-so-high alligator juniper, or was it only a spotted towhee? It wouldn't be the first dream I've had about these birds, and one more unfulfilled wish. I pine for last summer and the summers before and all the careful, gentle grosbeak visits.

My hot weather escapes to the cooler Arizona mountains seem like a life and death necessity to most people - who can survive 110 degrees in the shade? But with air conditioning, patio misters and swimming pools, desert life is not so dire. The long weekends under the pines are really a chance to slow down life's crazy pace, to sit outside and greet my neighbors as they walk their dogs and explore nearby hiking trails. It's also a time for friendly games of cards and potlucks with friends.

And when I'm really lucky, summer is a chance to welcome the avian visitors from Mexico and Central America. These birds are tough, flying thousands of miles in a short span of weeks, but are so fragile and vulnerable against glass and mirrors, and most anything man builds. So now my screen doors, sitting half closed to reduce the wide, tree-filled reflection, wait until I attach obstruction decals. All the while, my hearth patiently longs for a grosbeak trusting enough to return to a lonely feeder.