The warm weather is here and the windows are open. From my desk, the birds are keeping time — chirp chirp chirping away. These days the birds zip by through the garden. I see them streak past my window. I attribute their intention and speed to the incessant demands of chicks and fledglings. It’s a birdy-bird world.

High in the sky, the hawk cries as it is warned or punished for finding a nest full of eggs or chicks. Hawk chicks are hungry. As the smaller adult birds, say sparrows or catbirds, go find food for their babies, the hawk finds a nest of babies to feed its babies. The adults return and attack and yell at the hawk. It’s a bird eat bird world.

It’s easy to ignore or to obsess on the drama. I can hear mating, territory, or warning calls simply as birdsong. After all, it happens whether I can hear/understand it or not. It can be either a backdrop for or complete distraction from my own drama! Every year, the joy of seeing baby birds or finding a nest, active or post-family rearing, is consistently great. Understanding why small birds are attacking a hawk, is consistently distressing.

This spring when trimming back the forsythia, I found a small nest lined with plastic strips and used duct tape. The plastic strips flew out of the nest and I recognized all of it from its time sitting near our garbage can on our driveway. Here I thought someone had finally picked up the garbage and placed it in the bin or taken it to recycle (flat plastics are recycled into plastic decking material. Please take your plastic bags for recycling!), but instead the birds picked it up and put it in their nest! I guess they found out it’s an effective way to keep their babies dry and warm. Fascinating! Kind of gross, but I still love it.

Reuse, recycling, creativity, necessity, inventiveness, and it could be argued, playfulness — what a way to create and build with the materials we have! Much like this May Arts Marathon…using these resources of artists to raise money to bring safety and settlement to some who have been uprooted. It feels like a nice big round circle.

Oh did I say circle?

Madeline Fan

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