by Estela Dela Fuente

Created on: April 17, 2008

Neither the Birds of the Air Nor the Lillies of the Field

Last night I heard Canadian geese honking as they sped southward toward a warmer climate. The night was cold and clear, the stars sparkled like diamonds in a jeweler's black velvet case. It was barely September and the first frost of the season arrived unexpectedly early in southwestern Missouri. I knew that the cold snap would trigger the color change in the leaves of the hardwood trees that surrounded our lakeside cabin. In a few weeks the trees would be robed in dazzling gold, ochre, sienna, and fading green.

The frost that covered everything that night evaporated in the morning sun. The day warmed quickly and by afternoon it was a Indian summer day. We had put the patio furniture away two weeks before, but I dragged an old lawn chair out of the basement and plunked myself on the deck to enjoy a glass of wine and watch the birds at the three feeders we maintained. My going out on the deck prompted the birds' scared flight into nearby trees and shrubs, leaving the feeders swinging freely from their hooks. I could hear bird calls and twitters, but none dared return to the feeder, not even the aggressive blue jays. The squirrels eventually scampered out of the woods, across a small open space, and then hunched under the protection of a small shrub close to the largest of the feeders. From their place of safety they would dash out, dig around in the dirt under the feeder, and dash back with their find of cracked corn or sunflower seed kernels. After a while their forays lasted longer and longer, until they simply sat under the feeders and munched on what they found.

The chickadees came next, diving one at a time onto the perches of the smaller feeder, grabbing a beakful of seed, and immediately flying away to a nearby branch to eat their hit and run lunch. The tufted titmice called to each other in the trees and a woodpecker hammered in the distance; the jays squawked and hopped noisily from branch to branch. After a while a yellow finch flew to the finch feeder. It is a long plastic tube filled with thistle seeds, and its six perches are placed above the openings into the feeder to accommodate the finches' preference for eating while hanging upside down. Soon a second finch arrived, politely taking a perch opposite, rather than above, the first finch. The two went quietly about their business of feeding, totally oblivious to the other's presence while other finches hopped from branch to branch on a nearby

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