Dispatches from Babyville: For the Birds

Almost everything I know about birds I learned from the Bird Study, which is a magical, marvelous unit of study taught in second grade in my children’s elementary school.

Recently, I was walking home, practicing mindfulness. Meaning, my phone had died, so I was forced to pay attention to the world around me

What I noticed, almost immediately, were birds. So. Many. Birds. And it occurred to me that of the many incredible things we ignore in our daily lives as we rush around, texting and talking and blindly blundering forward, the most incredible is probably the airborne creatures that fill the skies with color and motion and song.

Almost everything I know about birds I learned from Bird Study, which is a magical, marvelous unit of study taught in second grade in my children’s elementary school. 

In Bird Study, every second grader selects their Bird of Choice. The kids then undertake an exhaustive study of this creature, the seven-year-old equivalent of a dissertation. Like the Hogwarts house you belong to, the kind of bird you pick says everything about you. 

My son, known in these parts as Primo, picked the Barn Owl. Ten years later, at high school graduation, he was inducted into the school’s honor society, called Order of the Owl, after the mascot. My son is wise beyond his years. 

My daughter, Seconda, chose the Northern Cardinal. With feathers of resplendent red and a magnificent crest, the bird is a burst of Technicolor, impossible to ignore. My daughter, to a tee. 

And my youngest, Terza, chose the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. Do you know how fast a ruby-throated hummingbird beats its wings? 53 beats per second. Which is very nearly the rate at which Terza talks, and walks, and hatches wild schemes. This bird is like no other bird out there. Magical. 

Terza began her Bird Study in the spring of 2020, during which our family of five was holed up in my parents’ home in Northern New Jersey. In a desperate effort to find a slightly silver-ish lining to the unrelenting Covid stormclouds, I decided that Northern New Jersey was the perfect place to conduct the long-awaited second-grade bird study! We could even, I suggested, get a bird feeder!

When we ventured to the local Walmart, there were no hummingbird feeders but there was a small, transparent feeder that attached to your window via suction cups, as well as a large sack of seed designed to attract a host of bright, beautiful birds—cardinals, yellow warblers, bluejays. Terza and I attached the birdfeeder to my bedroom window and filled it with seeds. Then we waited. 

“Nothing’s happening,” Terza said. “Why aren’t they coming?” 

“They’ll come,” said my husband, David. He’s from Tennessee, a fact that, in my mind, single-handedly qualifies him to serve as the family’s resident wildlife expert.

Terza looked as dubious as I felt. 

Then, one afternoon, I was working on my laptop at my father’s desk, when a blur of blue darted in and out of the feeder. So fast I’d have missed it if I blinked.

“A BIRD HAS COME!” I bellowed, thundering down the stairs to get Terza. “HURRY! COME SEE!”

You don’t need to be an ornithologist to guess that screaming “A BIRD HAS COME” is the fastest way to make a bird go. But after waiting silent and motionless for what felt like an eternity, the bluejay returned. Or possibly it was a different bluejay. It’s not like we could tell them apart. All I knew is our plan had worked! Terza and I watched the surprisingly large creature peck at the bird food, using his sharp beak to split the seeds on the floor of the feeder.

“He’s so pretty!” Terza cooed. 

“I know!” I said. “I’ve never seen a bird up close like this!”

“Let’s call him Bluey!” Terza proclaimed. 

I put my arms around my youngest daughter and squeezed. I was feeling hopeful, an unusual feeling for 2020.

We are making the best of a bad situation, I thought. 

Hope is a thing with feathers, I thought. 

The next morning, my peaceful veil of slumber was shredded by what sounded like a miniature jackhammer. RAPRAPRAPRAPRAP. 

“What—” I muttered to David, sleeping next to me. “What is that?” 

He squinted open his eyes and located the source of the sound. 

“It’s a bird,” he concluded.

Sure enough, in the feeder attached to my window, was Bluey.

I was suffused with surprise and excitement at the sight of the bird, who I’d come to think of already as ourbird. But then, almost immediately, these feelings were washed away by a flood of annoyance. It was 6am. Thanks to a combination of quarantine-induced late-night work sessions and quarantine-induced later-night insomnia, I never went to sleep before 2 am. So, what I really needed to do at that moment was not so much enjoy the miracle of avian splendor but go the *%$& back to sleep. 

RAPRAPRAPRAP

“What’s he doing?” I asked David. 

“What’s he doing?” David replied. “He’s eating the seeds we put out for him.” 

“But why so early?” I asked. 

“It was probably the only reservation he could get.” David rolled over, away from the window. “He’s a bird! This is when they eat! What do I know?”

RAPRAPRAPRAP.

“For the love of God,” I moaned. “Get rid of him!”

Which was easily achieved by David walking to the window. . 

Ten minutes later, though, the bird was back. 

“You have got to be kidding me,” David said. 

“I am going to lose it!” I cried. “This is the straw that broke the camel’s back!” 

“You wanted birds!” David pointed out oh-so-helpfully. “You’ve got birds!”

“I didn’t know they’d come so early! No one talks about how early birds eat!” 

“Who talks about birds?” he asked. “In Brooklyn?” 

“I want to go back to Brooklyn,” I said for the first, but not the last, time that day. 

And so it went for a few days, until finally, one morning when Bluey was enjoying the world’s loudest breakfast, I yanked open the window, scaring Bluey away. Then I grabbed the tray of food and flung its contents to the ground. 

“I’ve had enough of birds,” I told David, getting back into bed. 

The camel’s back was just too overloaded. It could not take even one more straw. 

The next spring, our family was back in Brooklyn, where we belong. Terza, now in third grade, and I reveled in sighting birds, nestled in tree branches, twittering on stoop steps, waddling brazenly towards us on elevated subway platforms.

“Did you know a pigeon is a dove?” I asked Terza one morning as we waited for the F train while watching pigeon antics.

“Of course,” she said. “DId you know a ruby-throated hummingbird can beat his wings fifty three times per second?” 

“Of course,” I said. “Did you know that hope is a thing with feathers?”

“That perches in the soul?” I’d made the kids memorize that poem during our quarantine and apparently, it had stuck. “Of course.” 

Terza tossed a crumb of her everything bagel to the grisly, threadbare-feathered, worse-for-the-wear-looking pigeon standing a few feet away. He walked over on stick legs, head bobbing, and pecked at it. 

Not as wise as a barn owl. Not as bright as a cardinal. Not as fast as a hummingbird. And definitely not as loud as a bluejay. 

But, hardy. Tough. Like all of us.