Growing with Children: The Joy of Loving Birds

This is Samuel, age 5, celebrating the coots at Hart Park Late this afternoon I saw them swirling above the tallest evergreens in our neighborhood. “Look at those birds!” Samuel said, delighted. I could not remember their name. I used my still clogged nose as an excuse for not recalling quickly. I was thinking something fowl – like something hen… but eagle like? No, not that.

“Turkey vultures!” I cried out, hearing the door slam behind Samuel. I'm not sure he heard me.

I am not sure when my love of birds, specific birds, started.

I know it was less than seven years ago when I was still content to only hear the birds, not knowing whose song was whose and I would proclaim, “These birds don’t show themselves to me. I don’t need to know their names.”

Maybe it was when Samuel was home in first grade, after a tumultuous kindergarten and a school district that failed him in the beginning of first grade. We would spend hours at Hart Park hiking, looking, talking and growing. We bumped into a birder there one day. He was pleased to see us in a lovely, hidden grove by the bridge, a place Samuel called “God’s Garden” because it truly was divine, not because anyone else had proclaimed it so.

The boys took turns filling the bird feeder This week I showed my Godson how to attract birds to the house: it was food, just like with any other species. We got bird seed, he stirred it up – and important part of the job – and he carefully filled my cheapo bird feeder and Samuel carefully hung it on our pine tree in a spot that has a perfect view from our kitchen table. This is, after all, the most likely place I am to sit, drink coffee, write and watch birds, noting with glee the sparrow or finch or, after Ciaran came, a nuthatch happened by. More specifically, it was a black eared nuthatch, I proudly told him when he came over the next time.

For whatever reason, Birds are the first lesson we are sharing. I have yet to pull out my vintage Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds and show it to Ciaran. Instead, I am allowing him to be wooed by the birds themselves. When we go for walks and I hear a bird I say something like, “I wonder what sort of bird sings that song?”

His head will lift and his eyes look to the sky, watching intently for the bird who matches the song. He looks for the bird, but like I used to be, is content for just the sounds. I smile, glad to have heard and shared the hearing.

He was being a "Muscovy Duck" whisperer. So fun! This week we went to feed the ducks at Hart Park, a time honored tradition for my children. In the beginning we had all sorts of crazy names for the ducks. We used to call the Coots “Dumb Country Ducks” because they showed up in droves in the winter and seemed to dance atop the water doing country dances while the mallards sort of rolled their eyes, quacking the way a duck should quack since that is the sound a mallard makes, not the sound a wood duck makes or a coot makes or any of the many other ducks I have watched and admired sound.

I used to call the Muscovy Ducks “Turkey Ducks” because they look like, you guessed it, turkeys. They will also follow humans around on the grass, not only sticking to the water.

How many different breeds of ducks do you see here? There were two kinds of geese at the park that day, the usual pure white ones as well as some lovely, grazing Canadian Geese. This excited me to no end because the Canadians looked so graceful and elegant to me. It also gave me a chance to talk about bird travels.

I know my father must have taught me something about birds when I was a little girl, but I don’t remember any of it.

I do know my children will remember it.

I loved how Emma explained the mallards to Ciaran and included, “Mallards are the ones that actually quack,” before ruining my fantasy about mallards mating for life later when our little friend wasn’t with us and was safely out of earshot.

I have been thinking since that afternoon why I feel empowered by knowing which duck and which bird is which. Perhaps it is because I know the strength of specific via general word choices. Maybe it is because I simply like knowing which bird that looks like this sounds like that. Truly, it may be that I love recognizing the call and the face of traveling birds who move in and around this area at this time of year.

Whatever my inner, unknown motivation may be, I know our moments with the birds and the ducks and including their care, witness and presence in our lives manages to simply grow the sweetness of our life experience. That's worthy enough.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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