Small Glory #5 - Birds and Eden
Birds only know the present moment, so maybe we should look them in the eye more often.
It always comes back to birds. I always come back to birds. Over and over and over I am drawn to them. And they often to me.
Yesterday, I sat next to Grandad’s chicken coop and watched the chickens peck around. They’re new and we’re trying to choose names for them. The night before, I lay in bed and listened to the ruru (moreporks) down in the bush, lone calls in the dark long after the dusk chorus had settled. This afternoon, I heard the short chirps of a pīwakawaka (fantail) overhead and looked up to find one dancing in the peeling gum tree. It always comes back to birds. Over and over and over.
Above soundbite: Moreporks recorded from my bedroom at home.
I am drawn to them. More now, a lot of people are. Maybe the bird lady from Mary Poppins isn’t so crazy. She knew a secret the rest of the world failed to see. That sort of thing often happens with visionaries, artists - those sorts of people. So ahead of their time they were ridiculed, but years after their death, lauded. Make friends with the birds. They’re everywhere. You’ll never be alone when birds sing and nest and soar nearby. They only know the present, the here and now and nothing else - no yesterday, no tomorrow. Just that instant of gliding on an updraft, that sunrise and song all there is, that fresh worm draw from the damp ground the only thing in that moment. Over and over and over, one present moment after the next.
I confessed when I moved down to Christchurch for university that I desperately missed the bird song I was so used to. I was told more than asked, ‘you’re a bit of a hippie aren’t you’. I shrank and felt embarrassed, were other people not missing things like that? They used it derogatorily, and for the first time I wondered whether I shouldn’t share things like that if I wanted to make new friends.
I guess Taranaki is quite different from Christchurch. Who gets to decide what a hippie is anyway. If it’s a bird lover then maybe I am a hippie. But I Googled the definition and it talks of those people in the 70s, long hair and counterculture. But if counterculture is a key word, then yes, for a young 17-year-old first at uni, it was not my main concern that all my 18-year-old peers could drink and I couldn’t, but the fact that I missed ever-present bird song. A silky sunshiny melody that ribboned through the sky.
The sky has intrigued me and terrified me since I was young, it still does, I want both to stare endlessly at endless starry skies (I like how we say skies plural, when we are all looking at the same one), but also to never look up and feel infinitesimal like I sometimes do. But that’s where a lot of birds live. So I look up again and again. Although I know the sound of tūī and kererū overhead from the cadence of their wings I find I must stare at their underbellies, one white the other iridescent. I must look up, and they must look down, and we stare at each other often. Only once have I felt like a hawk soaring. When I took a hot air balloon ride and rode currents in the sky. I stared down on the birds staring down and I felt perspective. Seek high places. Over and over and over.
Clockwise from top left: Seagulls at New Brighton, takahē at Tiritiri Matangi Island, tūī in Taranaki, kererū in the Coromandel.
I have built a bird feeder to hang outside my window and I can lie in bed or sit at my desk and watch sparrows and greenfinches gorge themselves on seed, sometimes stopping to look me in the eye. That’s what gets me, over and over. I return to birds because they return to me. Some days I walk in the bush, I walk down streets, I sit by rivers and I wait. By the Ōtākaro (Avon) River one day I watched the water slither slowly, it took me into my head. Then a sparrow came and hovered right in front of me. It hung in place and looked me in the eye. I drew immediately into the naked present and my heart settled into a soft couch in my chest. All was well.
On a walk in a place I had never walked before, I didn’t wear headphones (as I never do when walking by the sea or in the bush) and I heard the high pitched chirp of a pīwakawaka. I found it dancing around a tree. They dance often. I have seen many in my favourite place at home. They dance in shafts of ethereal light that beam through the kauri canopy and meet the Mangaotuku stream. I swear I have skirted the edges of Eden. The pīwakawaka on my walk in that unfamiliar place got closer and closer, it both followed and led the way, waiting ahead on the path before flitting next to me in the trees then falling behind, content in its morning jig. It came back to me over and over, never out of sight. I was torn, I like to leave some moments only for my memory, then draw them up over and over in a golden veil and let them hang in my conscious. Or I wondered whether I should take a video to remember it exactly as it was, and to show other people the glory of Mother Nature. I walked and walked, I took a video, then I walked and walked. Heaven. Bliss. Eden. All.
Above: The pīwakawaka on my walk.
I have walked with takahē on Tiritiri Matangi Island. I have watched kotare (kingfisher) sit on powerlines at sunset. I have seen a kererū crash though a window. I have heard gulls caw. I have known birds always. But only by their sounds, sights and eyes. Never can I recall holding one. That requires pressing down their wings. And who am I to deny their flight. Who are we to suppress their greatest gift. The one I envy most. Perspective.
Below: A minute of birds in Aotearoa New Zealand. (Music, Mt Baker by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith).