# The Birds



## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

It's an interesting time, in the New Jersey woods. Summer is just past its height - not past its hottest, but the heavy tread of fall can be heard in the distance. The dense color of green is still everywhere, lush and full, but you can see it in the weeds, which have reached as far as they can out of the earth and have begun, ever so slightly, to wilt. In a week I am sure the ground will be covered with dead yellow leaves, from the swamp trees that thrive here, and the bottom leaves of the weeds will look as though they have been charred black with an open flame.

I say the swamp trees thrive here, but it's not true. There's not one of them that doesn't have a few dead limbs, that snap off like the dry twigs they are. The trees are all ill, and fall comes early to them.

Bird season - we're on the "Atlantic Flyway," one of the paths migrating birds take to and from the southern hemisphere - is from April to August or September. Some time in August or September the insects will make a mighty roar, late at night, a roar that rocks the forest, and that will be the beginning of the end, for the bird season. I suspect the insects and the birds are to some extent in competition for the space, and this roar is the insects letting the birds know they can't have it all their own way any more. But for now the birds, here in New Jersey, are still a force. 

The noise they make in the morning, when they wake up, and at night, when they settle in. How they chatter amongst themselves! You'd think they had vital information to communicate. And how comfortable they are all mixed up in their various species! Each one leavens all the others, and each has his unique cry. Not too long ago, before the bird season began, a pair of birds came through the woods, and they twittered continuously as they flew. I'm sure they were a nesting pair; but they had very different cries, all the same. The one was like "twitter, twitter, twitter, ..." without end, as it flew. The other was like "chirp, chirp, chirp, ..." also without end. How much they had to say to each other, and how little content there was! Reminded me of high school lol.

You find out things, too, if you spend time in the woods. You discover that different individual warblers, all of the same species, have personalities. You have Down's Syndrome warblers, that never seem to know what warble they're trying to do, and mumble out something frantic and unfocussed without end. There is a disturbing number of these. Heavy metal contamination, I'm thinking (not the music: the chromium or the lead). You have Woody Allen warblers, that know the warble they want but half the time, can't hit their mark. And you have James Bond warblers, that know what they want and hit the mark every time.

And for birds who cannot see you, you may sound like a bird - birds are surprisingly noisy, when they're on their own, they crash about in the woods like much larger animals - and they will pitch woo. If you've never been made love to by a tiny, sharply pointed, scratchy, feathery beast that cannot see you, it's impossible to imagine the tenderness of the stream of sound such an animal can produce. It's really quite astonishing. That such an uncuddly animal could have love - or its simulacrum - in store.


----------

