Confessions of a bird freak

I return to you, Bird Freaks, from my longest hiatus yet. Would you believe me if I said that you didn’t hear from me for the past nine (or ten) months because I was pregnant? In a sense of the word, I was: pregnant with ideas for news stories, features, poems, and songs, and busy writing, publishing, and performing all of them. I am proud to announce that I have since birthed those pieces, and they are out finding their places in the world. I am left with an empty nest.

My nest is even emptier now because I recently lost my childhood dog and best friend of nearly 16 years. Some of you have known me, and her, for all 16 of those years and will understand when I say that without her, I no longer feel sure of who I am, where I am, or why I am. I do not remember life before her. She died one month ago, and I’ve had no desire to go birdwatching since. When I step outside, I know there are still birds singing, but I can hardly hear them.

Last June in Austin, a female Black-chinned Hummingbird built a nest in my parents’ backyard and laid two jellybean-sized eggs. One month later, after meticulous attention and protection by their mother (and mine), two young hummingbirds fledged and flew away. Their mother left the empty nest behind. Later that summer, contractors knocked down the nest, and it now rests inside my childhood home, as does my dog. The nest is made of plant fuzz, lichen, and spider and insect silk, and weighs nearly nothing in my hand. It looks like artwork.

Most hummingbirds don’t make it through their first year; those that do face a lifetime of threats including predation, cold weather, habitat loss, and collisions with cars and windows. I thus consider it a blessing to encounter any hummingbird in the wild. Baby hummingbirds in particular are unbelievably fragile — one of my favorite writers, Sy Montgomery, described them as “bubbles wrapped in feathers”. It was a miracle for my family to witness them enter the world, open their eyes, and take flight. I do not know where, or if, they are now.

With love,

Bird Freak