March Madness is in the air, and rivals are engaged in intense competition. While some of this madness plays out on basketball courts, nature is also putting on a show. Birds are competing for mates, nest sites, and the best territories. They are swept up in the energy of spring. I’ve wondered if they might be singing some Bob Dylan while on the wing.
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on, like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue
Some of these birds are so blue they defy description. Have you ever gotten a close look at a male Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) singing in the early morning light? I’m glad they are back, animating the landscape with their calls and flashes of blue.
I find Eastern Bluebirds reassuring and calming; they always seem to be having a sensible conversation. You often hear their soft, warbled calls before you see them. They are a shocking beauty coupled with the glory of spring.
We need more Eastern Bluebirds in our lives. We should be surrounded by these brilliant blue birds that help us appreciate the intangible essence of life. We would be better served by more intangible life and less concrete. Our world has become too hard, impervious, angular, utilitarian, and devoid of mystery.
Rainer Maria Rilke lived in Paris in the early 1900s, and he acknowledged the challenges of living indoors and the need to heed the call of trees.
The Way In
Whoever you are: some evening, take a step
Out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are.
Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves
from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes
slowly, slowly, lift one black tree
up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.
With that you have made the world, the world is immense
and like a word that is still growing in the silence.
In the same moment that your will grasps it,
your eyes, feeling it subtly, will leave it …
Or as Bilbo Baggins said as he left on his adventure:
The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow, if I can.
Wild roses, trees, and bluebirds call us to life beyond the front door—a life infused with dappled light, shifting shadows, and countless lives unfolding as the center of their universe. New life wants nothing more than a chance to live.
We can give the birds a chance by providing for their needs. For example, our local chapter of the National Audubon Society, the Grand Prairie Bird Alliance, has started a birdhouse project. We are making birdhouses and giving them away to community members to invite more birds to share space with us.
Birdhouses seem simple on the surface - square boxes that mimic the straight lines of our urban lives. But a birdhouse is more than its boxy shape. Its small, round hole admits life and a round nest is soon built that contains round eggs which hatch into tiny rounded chicks. Those chicks quickly develop the graceful lines of a bird and burst forth from the round hole. The birdhouse injects new life into the world. Sometimes, two broods can be produced by a single birdhouse in a season. If the house is not there, the cavity-nesting birds do not get to nest. We quickly cut down most dead trees in urban areas, so natural cavities are scarce.
Tending to birdhouses creates new emissaries of abundance who take flight and spread joy across the world.
The young bluebirds that fledge from that nest may fly hundreds or thousands of miles during migration, a gift of iridescent blue streaming across the landscape. Gifts that keep on giving, year after year. Once you have tended to a bluebird house, you will see all bluebirds as a relation, as part of you. The world will become more familial. The reality that life is based on mutualism can take hold.
Eastern Bluebirds pass through our area on spring migration, and many arrive with a mate with the intention of nesting here. They manage to stay connected while flying great distances in the dark. Contact calls are a lifeline. When they appear in our midst, the bond between the pair is palpable. The distance between the male and female rarely exceeds 100 yards. They are never out of earshot. I recently watched a male perch above his mate and call softly to her with tender, quiet notes. His entire body, and especially his throat, swelled with effort. It sounded like a conversation and song at the same time. A content love song that permeated the woods.
I hope a few Eastern Bluebirds will choose to reside in the birdhouses we put up for them. These sturdy little houses are in high demand. Tree swallows, House Sparrows, House Wrens, and Black-capped Chickadees all compete for these deluxe accommodations. We welcome all of these birds and strive to support diversity in general. Even the much-maligned House Sparrow is fascinating to observe and develop a relationship with. They are among the few birds that can survive in many urban areas. So, how picky can we be?
The Cornell Nest Watch Program is a comprehensive resource for birdhouse plans covering many different species. It is a good place to learn about different types of birdhouses, how to build them, what type of habitat to put them in, and how to manage them. The Sialis website is a wealth of bluebird-specific information and includes designs for things like sparrow spookers, which are shiny reflective strips that deter House Sparrows.
You can also learn about Tree Swallows on the Sialis website. They are another brilliant blue bird. One family of Tree Swallows eats 180,000 insects while raising a brood of young. They also like to play with feathers, and if you throw a feather up into the air, they may fly by, grab it, play with it, and eventually take it to their nest. Sometimes, they will even take the feather out of your hand. If Tree Swallows are outcompeting Eastern Bluebirds in your area, you can put up paired nest boxes within 5-20 feet of each other to provide nesting opportunities for both Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows. The Tree Swallows may even help defend the Eastern Bluebird nest if they nest near each other.
I long to be in the presence of Eastern Bluebirds in the heat of summer. To be serenaded by their song and enveloped in their delicate and ineffable ways. I hope they do not all fly off in search of greener pastures. We have little habitat left and hardly any bugs, but I hope they stay with us anyway.
A few Eastern Bluebirds may light a spark in us and help us see that we can make space for brilliant blue life and be richer for it. We could be held in blue. A blue thread that knits together the seasons of our lives, spring to summer to fall and winter. A blue presence, a soft warble, a defiant beauty that says life will win out in the end. Beauty will persist in our presence, a brilliant beauty that comes and goes with the wind. I hope they take up residence in our houses and our hearts.
Like Charles Bukowski, we will enter into a secret pact with bluebirds.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
You?
Why are we so afraid of tenderness? Rilke describes this fear as a dragon that is really a princess in disguise.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
If only we could act with beauty and embrace the Eastern Bluebirds sailing down out of the sky with sunlight in their wings. We could take our time and learn how to get close to them so we could see the tawny feathers over the male’s throat expand with the effort of his subtle song. Watching him would make us forget our concerns as we get lost in his soft presence. Maybe the bluebird sings for us so our relationship can blossom. His song, an invitation to be less yourself and more of everything.
Sialia sialis is a poem with wings flowing over the landscape like water over stone. Our hearts soften as you welcome us home. Our feelings follow you and mingle with the wind. Warmth rises in our chests.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Bilbao Baggins, that Dylan fellow, and Charles Bukowski all in one essay, beautifully tied together! And gorgeous, tender bluebirds. What a thought- expanding delight! 🙏
No bluebirds here, but lots of house sparrows, a couple of blue jays, a cardinal, crows and a rare sighting of a couple of ravens. All stop by here for their daily food.
As for why we are afraid of tenderness, the way that I see it, is that competitive capitalism, the system that we are under like a canopy of repression, makes tenderness seem foolish, a waste of energy. More's the pity. Bukowski understood that.