A Bird in The Tree Is Worth Two On The Page

We came to a screeching halt. About a dozen people were looking up at the sky. I thought maybe Superman had spotted a phone booth or Icarus was being grounded for offending the gods with wax melting on his chutzpah.

But no, their eyes were fixed on the branches of a tree. We were driving in a desert area of Moreno Valley outside of Palm Springs. These were a group of bird-watchers in ecstasy over an oriole. They were in the middle of a heated dispute over whether it was orange-yellow or yellowish orange and was it a bobolink or a Baltimore oriole with no sense of direction. Birders have quick eyes and acute ears listening for the trills or see-yew song. 

And what kind of tree was it, I hear you ask. It was medium height with lots of leaves where birds might come and go in anonymity. It could have been a Joshua or an overgrown pinyon or maybe a common elm. I’m a big city guy and, as a kid, trees were 1^st base or the goal line. Maple and elm were bus stops. Yes, it’s true, as a poet I should be able to honor them with a caption. But my unknowing helped define me by who I'm not.

I’m throwing names around like I know what I’m talking about. In fact, I don’t know a sparrow from a swallow. Thank God for Google where one can get to impersonate a birder on paper at least. Lo these many years I have managed to live in the bliss of ignorance in terms of Nature. I can identify a willow only if it is weeping.

Am I allowed to love trees without a glossary of I.Ds? I enjoy watching their greenery swaying to capricious gusts of wind. I’m transfixed by the reptilian roots of fig trees and how branches reach for the sun with contorted elbows.

As for birds I know a hummingbird from a crow and a sandpiper from a gull but not much else. My head hangs in shame. I wonder if a rufous-sided towhee flew in my window, would it recognize itself in the Audubon book on my coffee table. If names confer mastery, I’m content living in an aviary without dominion. I would be in constant awe of their plumage even as they remained nameless.