For the Birds

Spring has finally sprung, perhaps a little bit.

I belong to a birdwatching group/organization on facebook. A few weeks past, a large number of people started commenting on a funny little bird everybody was seeing that is normally a rare sight in the province.

It's called the American Woodcock.

Woodcocks are native to Nova Scotia but normally shy, nocturnal, and live in deeper wooded areas away from common sight. They use their long bills to probe for worms in the ground.

When they got back this year, the ground was still frozen solid and snow-covered. They were showing up in unlikely places, desperate for food, starving, dying.

Somehow, the tale of their plight became a widely known thing, and the plight of all the other migratory birds arriving back after a long journey to find the landscape looking nothing like spring.

The response was amazing.

I've never heard local and national news talk about the plight of migratory birds. I've never heard so many mass calls for people to put out a little something, anything, to help.

My walk to work in the morning takes me through a pretty sketchy, very urban neighborhood. I saw piles of cracked corn and bird seed out in piles on the lawns of apartment buildings. Someone was back in our spot in the woods leaving piles of seed and chopped fruit. (We did as well.) People bought up nightcrawlers and fishing worms at stores to put out in dishes in their lawns. A local store owner bought massive bags of bird feed--and gave them away for free.

It was inspiring to see so many people doing what they could.

Spring is coming slowly now--weeks later--there is a lot more bare ground, green growth, but still so much snow. Things are not as dire, but they are still not great for mid April.

I had placed a handful of peanuts out on the deck one morning, just after (yet another) several inches of snow. I thought perhaps some crows would find them. They went uneaten, until several days later, when the snow had melted away. A pair of Blue Jays came and grabbed them up. I gave them more, they came back.

They're starting to trust me now, and they have me trained--in the morning, I hear a scream or a squawk, around 8am, of a blue jay on the deck wanting his breakfast.

We also keep a feeder out in our spot in the woods. We were there yesterday and saw it was empty. This afternoon I went out with my wife, and my dedicant (who was visiting) and filled the feeder. It took five minutes at most for the woods to come alive around us. Goldfinches, chickadees, juncos, song sparrows, fox sparrows. They were obviously needing the food. It made me beyond happy to see them all, so suddenly, and know that this is helping them even a little. If one more bird survives a miserable winter and this slow awful spring, it's worth all the money on birdseed and the wet feet and traipsing through melting slushy deep snow in April to fill that feeder even once in awhile.

And now it feels and smells and looks like spring is coming.

We'll be all right.