Good Birds...and Robins

Among my many loves with words, I’m captivated by the ones my students and I discover are just fun to say - words whose shapes and sounds are simply enough to delight, aside from their actual meanings. Buffoon, oligarchy, foible...some words just have a kind of tonal personality. One of those tongue ticklers for me is the word “ubiquitous.” It just sounds so fussy and precise, as if going about wearing pince-nez glasses on a little chain and reorganizing the place settings. Beyond simply being amusing to say, ubiquitous does have an important and precise meaning, though, identifying things that are constantly encountered, existing everywhere. Things that are unique to a place or its people - scrapple, sweet tea, chainsaw-carved Sasquatches, chislic, thimble museums, and such - are a key element of what makes travel across America so fascinating, yet just as interesting are how many things across the country, such as love and laughter, are ubiquitous. Birds offer another excellent example of this, three in particular.

(*Note: I could have made it four birds and included robins on this list, as well as the subsequent observations I draw from them, but the robin is a cheerful morning creature, something I simply cannot abide. Though indeed ubiquitous, the robin is a perky, brainless bastard.)

The barn swallow is found in every state, spinning, and diving with equal glee at urban intersections and over isolated country lakes. Its agility in flight is mesmerizing, as it feeds almost entirely on the wing and has both uncanny vision and aerobatic capability. It is also beautiful, with its cobalt blue head and tawny body. It is among the bird species that have adapted best to cohabitation with humans, learning to build little annexes directly on and under the eaves of our structures, hence its name. When it speaks, it doesn’t sing so much as chatter delightedly and then only to others nearby. Unlike robins, who feel it necessary to blurt out to all and sundry in the predawn hours, as if everyone longed for their inane prattle.

American crows can also be found in every state, though they are smart enough to avoid large swaths of godforsaken desert where little lives but saguaro and the occasional human under witness protection. Crows are among the most intelligent animals on Earth, and one of only three species known to make tools, next to humans and chimpanzees. They play for its own sake, have a mischievous sense of humor, mate for life, and maintain extended family ties. They also have been shown to have a rudimentary language, using it to pass along generational memories. This suggests that crows may actually tell one another stories. Contrary to popular belief, crows are not primarily scavengers but are highly adaptive foragers. As opposed to robins who have low intelligence and a limited diet, eating mostly worms, which they fully deserve.

Turkey vultures can also be found in every state during the summer months, but live primarily in the southeast year-round. They are commonly misnamed “buzzards” even though the actual common buzzard looks more like a small hawk and lives in Europe. Still, as a son of the west, I will always knowingly refer to the turkey vulture as a buzzard. Unlike their cousin, the black vulture, a gothic horror we encountered during a ride through northern Georgia, turkey vultures will not attack living prey. They eat mostly mammal carcasses, though they will also eat those of reptiles, fish, and other birds - including robins, fortunately. They are adept at riding thermals in the air, making them majestic and graceful in flight. Closer views of their bald red heads and ragged plumage quickly dispel any positive first impressions with the vague, familiar disappointment we all feel when we see them and think, “An eagle...a hawk!” then, “Oh, just a buzzard.” Still, they do clear the lands of carrion, benefiting us all, and because of this, their immune systems have been the focus of much research into resistance and treatment for botulism, anthrax, cholera, and salmonella.

Riding from Ohio through Illinois and into Missouri recently, I saw each of these birds again, as we do every day and everywhere on the road. It occurred to me how each one speaks differently of the things that we love easily, how the hardest things for us to love are still worth the effort, and the difficulty of appreciating the things other people love. Consider how the barn swallow shows the ease with which we love people and things that are beautiful, harmless, and that take to us easily. There is a natural acceptance of such things being intrinsically good, and we would find it odd if someone didn’t love them. Attractive and amiable people, days off from work, nice kids, water that tastes and washes clean, beautiful music, puppies, the flight of a barn swallow - these take no effort to embrace. They are the things we should absolutely look for and remember first, because knowing we have such loves in common bonds us, helping us connect with one another and find the willingness to understand one another’s crows.  

By that, I mean that I love crows, but realize that many others do not. They are a constant amusement and delight to me, as I appreciate their intelligence, their sense of curiosity, and unwavering commitment to one another. Their raucous voices, which other people find grating, sound like laughter and ribbing to me and knowing a bit about them, I know that that’s what they often truly are. But I still know that my crows aren’t so beloved by everyone. The same thing goes for anchovies, grey skies, and old loud pickup trucks - I just love some things that other folks don’t understand or even outright dislike. Likewise, I know and still love people who have affinities for big houses in vast, covenant-controlled hellspaces, godawful pop music, interstate highways, math, certain politicians - robins - and other things about which I don’t share their attraction. But we do have barn swallows and all that other good stuff between us already, and knowing that, I can better accept our differences. It’s important that we not feel obliged to try to convert one another or to belittle the things on which we differ. Respect is a form of love too, albeit one of the hardest to offer the buzzards.

Buzzards are the things that we nearly all find hard to love but that are important parts of the lives we share, and from which we all benefit. They are often given short shrift, but it’s important to see how, after sharing the swallows and accepting our crows, the buzzards become just another way for us to see ourselves in one another. They are the warty things that we all tend to ignore, but from which we all still benefit, and we can recognize those benefits as a shared experience, possibly even commiserating over our endurance of them. Such buzzards are ubiquitous in all our lives - road construction, dental work, taxes, waiting in lines - buzzards all, and also all things that make up our common experience in a community of humans. So in this life we share, I will resolve to revel in and enjoy life’s swallows with you, allowing for your crows, and offering grumbling, shared respect for our shared buzzards, even if not embracing them. In doing so, we can both also share a ubiquitous measure of gratitude for the buzzard’s greatest gift of all. 

It doesn’t sing in the morning.