Bird Brain

This post is all about birds, specifically, my experiences with birds.  Those of you who know my art (and for those who don't but would like to here's my website: thesearepaintings.googlepages.com) know that I love birds, especially the tropical colourful ones, but also our feathered locals.  In my childhood I remember feeling enchanted by the swooping Barn Swallows, whom my mother, a neat freak if one ever lived, would try to chase out of the garage with a broom and take down their nests.  In her words she didn't like them shitting on the car.  On the other hand she didn't care much for mosquitoes and swallows, well, they eat lots of mosquitoes. Now the barn swallow is practically gone from Vancouver.  They have almost disappeared and I miss them painfully.

     I was intrigued by the beautiful rollicking whistle of the Crested Myna.  This is a bird that was brought over from China in 1890, was accidentally released in the wild and soon became a common and established bird in the Lower Mainland.  I thought they had the most wonderful song.  My mother called them "Japanese Starlings."

They eventually died out and the last pair perished in 2003 near the south end of the Cambie Street Bridge.  In 2002 I saw those two birds.  I remember the first time I heard a robin sing and knew it was a robin as well as the first time I saw a red-shafted flicker flying across the field behind our house.  I also loved the Brewer's Blackbird  and when the sun hit their glossy plumage I would look for the reflections of green and violet in their black feathers.  By the river I saw the Red-Winged Blackbirds.  Gold Finches in our field I named wild canaries.

When I was in fifth grade and we'd moved to a split-level on a small plot I saw my first Western Grebe struggling to fly off from the wet road.  In the darkness he must have thought the wet pavement was really water.  I was on my way to school but a kind man stopped his car, wrapped his coat around the poor bird and promised to take it the SPCA.  When I was in grade six I saw a Mountain Blue Bird, one of the very few seen in the Lower Mainland. 

That was when I would watch in September for the return of the Band Tailed Pigeons to the oak trees in Minoru Park.

     Throughout my teens my interest in birds flagged.  I did enjoy seeing some of the exotic birds on display in the Stanley Park Zoo, such as a Himalayan Monal.

  When I was fifteen a friend and I were visiting together.  We were both fundamentalist Christians and when my friend, who two years later died from cancer (he was just twenty-one) said in awe and wonder "And to think some people say that evolved."  Even then I was a little more open minded than my friend Craig about the likelihood of evolution and maybe God could have been somehow involved in that amazing process but I said nothing and simply absorbed the incredible beauty of that bird's colours.

     My interest in birds resurged when I was about twenty-three.  I was working nights at a downtown parking lot at the Hotel Vancouver.  In the morning I would treat myself to breakfast, usually waffles at the Sylvia Hotel restaurant (before it was renovated into something fancy-shmancy and absolutely beautiful with an ocean view), then tired I would find my way home and sometimes stop in one of the branch libraries.  In spite of my exhaustion from working all night I would look at one of the most beautifully illustrated books of birds of the world ever (titled "Birds of the World" by Oliver Austen) and was knocked breathless by the wonderful bird paintings of Arthur Singer.  I found myself sharing a table with an Asian man from Malaysia who kindly enjoyed the book with me and identified some of the birds he recognized from Malaysia.  Three years later I began making batiks, a craft I had learned and excelled in in high school, using birds as a theme.  I discovered in a book store, for a good price that book, Birds of the World, that had tantalized me from library shelves.  I bought it and it remains in my library, in worn condition but highly prized among my more than five hundred books.

     Around that time, one morning, following an early mass at St. James I was walking home along Commercial Drive when I saw one of our local sparrows, a Song Sparrow, trapped in a doorway.  He couldn't find his way out so I caught him gently and let him perch on top of my hand.  I was worried about having to bring him home to nurse him to health, particularly because in those days I had a cat who had a refined taste for little birds.  I walked for several blocks with this wild bird perched serenely on my hand, rather eliciting amazement from passers-by.  When we arrived at the Grandview Cut, a gorge with trees throughout the bird took its cue and flew away into the trees.

     A couple of years later I saw a pigeon at rest on the grass.  She let me approach her.  It was as if she couldn't or didn't want to fly away.  She let me pick her up in my hands.  I held her up and said, "You can fly.  So...Fly!" and off she went.

     It must have been more than ten years later when I was homeless and couch-surfing with some friends in the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver, when on my way back to the house one night I stopped, feeling tired and very sad about my condition to rest on the curb of the sidewalk.  I saw something plummet down from the sky and land right next to me.  It was a red-shafted flicker

 I reached down and gently stroked the bird on the white patch on his lower back.  I have never felt anything so soft.  He remained with me.  I reached down, petted him one more time and off he flew.

I had already been painting for the past five years (you guessed it) birds.  I still paint them.  I have since become quite fascinated with crows and ravens.  Crows have the most intense and irrational (I think) hatred for ravens.  Once, just a few years ago I noticed two crows harassing a raven perched on a lamp standard.  He seemed quite serene and really appeared to be ignoring his tormentors.  Seeing how much bigger and more magnificent the raven was I looked up and said to the two crows in Spanish. "Ustedes tienen envidia" or, you're just jealous.  The two crows stopped what they were doing and flew promptly away.  In June 2002 when I was hiking a lot in the forest of Stanley Park I made a point of befriending as much as I could the local crow population.  When they appeared to be ready to dive bomb me since it was nesting season I would try to sooth them in Spanish, assuring them that I was their friend and meant them no harm.  They very soon relented and from then on whenever I would walk by them I would gently salute them in Spanish and they would look at me and sometimes quietly follow me for a short distance. One day, deep in the forest, I felt tired and thought of lying down on the dry forest floor for a brief rest.  Just when I was doing this I heard a very loud cawing.  I looked up and noticed three rough looking characters advancing towards me.  I was out of there in no time.  I am thoroughly convinced that, having befriended the crows that they came also to consider me their friend and seeing that I was in danger warned me and possibly helped save my life.

     There was another time when, walking in the forest near UBC I came across a baby crow on the ground.  It's parents were cawing madly at me.  I reached for a ripe salmonberry, dropped it in the baby's mouth and the parents promptly calmed down.  I fed it some more salmonberries and then walked on.  For the next three days I saw the same baby crow on the ground.  I would always feed it a few salmonberries.  The parents watched calmly and serenely from the upper branches.

     I will conclude with this little incident.  One day in a park I saw one crow attack another.  Then three other crows came to its defence and stood between the attacker and the victim crow.  I don't know what they were saying to each other but they appeared to be holding counsel, then pronounced judgement on the attacker and banished him because he very quickly flew away from them.

     I would like to conclude this account with two very sad incidents.  One was when, crossing the bridge of the Grandview Cut I saw a raven perched in one of the trees and a bright yellow parakeet next to him.  A relationship of trust must have developed between them because the parakeet was cuddled next to his huge black protector.  Then suddenly, without warning, the raven attacked and killed the parakeet, and probably ate it after.

     And finally, during one of my many walks in Pacific Spirit Park I saw a hawk catch and carry off a robin.  Then I saw and heard another robin, its mate or its friend, traumatized and crying and wailing in the most piteous voice.  It was so heartbreaking.