A few ounces of downy squeals suddenly became something: a familiar noise picked out
of the din of daily sounds to become its own distinct entity. Awareness.
The highpitched shrieks were amplified by the dynamic
acoustics of the carport.
A week and a half ago I discovered high overhead another finch nest,
filled with these four famished nestlings. It was only by their vocal
response to the parents’ feeding that I was alerted to the chicks’ presence, to
their emergence from the eggs that had remained hidden within the sanctity and
haven of the messy nest in the rafters.
The first nest I found
several months ago remained unused this season. Just above it and obscured in foliage, was a second nest with screamingly hungry babies. I was never able
to see their tiny forms, but one day when there was a gaping hole of silence in
the fabric of morning sounds I realized they had fledged.
The thirdfound nest was
no longer visited by the adultfinches; I’m not sure when I last saw the redhead
or his bride diving into the climbing vine. But I dismayingly discovered that
three eggs nestled by the dutiful mama finch were gone. Absent
from the nest. No shell fragments, the demise of eggs. Surely there had been no
hatch or nestlings in - or any fledging from – that nest; it’s just a step away
from my office: I would’ve known…seen…heard…watched…praised… any furthering
of those eggs.
More than five hundred paces back and forth from window to
window, out the door discretely, peering over the back fence, moving no closer
than a prudent ecologist ought. The best photo of the carport finches became
public territory: four tiny ones posted on this blog on the worldwide net
of electronic obsession.
And within one hundred and twenty minutes of posting that
photograph, a trip into the kitchen for personal sustenance delivered me to a
different sound: the familiar shrieks coming, instead, from the ground. It was the
first fledgling, hovering in a sitstand crouch with legs too large for the tiny
fluff of its corpus, in the middle of the driveway.
Within another two hours a second one stood on the hot
pavement of the driveway: a brother nestling-turned-fledgling.
The fifth found.around.the.house.nest
got toppled sideways, wedged into a crack in support beams below its original
perch; on the ground below I found the yellow smatterings of three
eggfinchbabiesnomore and the faintest blue shell fragments. I bowed in honor and
to stroke the shellbits… I uttered a prayer like a mantra or eulogy or poem.
The other two babies remained on the fourth nest, no doubt ready to fledge
within hours. The bushes lining the for-now-banned-to-auto-driveway rustles
with the movements of fledglings learning from the watchful mom and bright red
male how to survive outside the nest. The cat watched from inside. I watched from
inside, too.
* * *
I must have inadvertently caught in that
four.finch.nestlings.image the final moments of the tiny birds’ early life in
the cupnest.
They are my bliss, my distraction from – as well as my
fodder for – work. My muse.
Every time I look up in coming months at the wires.fencetop.treelimbs
and see several ounces of finch perched there, I will wonder if it is one of
the once-nestlings beginning its lessthantwelveyear residency on this
shimmering teal planet.
