The BIRD Are Coming! Part 2 (A Little Birdie Tells Us...)

So this blog was supposed to be a hopeful one.  One to remind us of the promise of Humanity.  The Milk of Human Kindness...and it will be.  But since ICE and Co. are quickly turning into Brown Shirts, I think it's time for some levity.  'Memba this?

Ummmmmm...come to think about it...those lil' tots look like poster kinder for The Hitler Youth.  And it looks like "Mom" is pouring blood on the ice at the 13 second mark.  Huh.  So much for levity.  And now I'm thinking about "Box" from Logan's Run.  "Memba him?  It was his job...to freeze you!

And now I'll never watch this scene the same way again as it's become a parable for what's happening now.  
So, let's move on!
Where were we?  Oh yeah...KEANU REEVES!  He always makes things better.  When last we met, we were inquiring as to Mr. Reeves' love (or not) for our Fine Feathered Friends.

Now, I think the folks at the TikTok Keanu Fan Club might be making assumptions about Mr. Reeves ornithophilia; but I think they're pretty safe assumptions.  HAL agrees!:

And it seems to be backed up by other humans as well:

Here's another shot of Keanu "birdwatching":

And a link to watch this delightfully dumb video!
www.tiktok.com/@keanufanclub/video/7460541008804203809

And this brings us to some more GOOD NEWS about birds; brought to us, I feel, by the birds themselves.  I'm not quite exactly sure what type of bird that is that Keanu is admiring; but it looks a lot like a wood thrush.  Now, the wood thrush is a fascinating creature.  I'd never really heard one until I moved to Virginia; into a neighborhood that is still quite heavily wooded with natural forest (we have brown bears in our back yard!).  The wood thrush resembles an American Robin, in fact, I think they're in the same family.  Yes, they're both thrushes:

The wood thrush is a "near threatened" species, mostly because the woods they inhabit are disappearing.  They also have it coming at them from both ends.  They spring and summer here and fall and overwinter in South America, which is also losing its' forests.  Now, I've lived where I live for quite some time (like, shit, 20 years??!!?) and every summer I hear the wood thrush in the trees behind our house.  It's a haunting sound.  Their calls echo; and I attributed this to the "hollows" of the hills we're in, which amplify and muffle sounds in strange ways.  But the wood thrush's echoes are not an unusual phenomenon of acoustics.  The echoes are coming from the bird itself:

They are very secretive birds, usually staying high in the tree-tops: very much heard but not often seen.  That is, until this spring.  Which is interesting to me, since my phone has been auto-doom-scrolling to me, the dire news about an overall, general decline in bird populations.  So for years, in the warm weather, I only heard them.  It seemed as though they started their haunting songs in the early, late-afternoon until near sunset.  I never saw one.  A single one.  And I looked, believe me.  I'm not an "avid" bird-watcher; but I am a bird-watcher.  I keep a little journal of sightings of note.  Here's one from a few years ago (I hadn't actually laid eyes on the wood thrush yet):

But this spring, a bird flew into the yard and was sitting there and I didn't recognize it right off.  Then I realized it was a wood thrush.  And since then, I have had five or six eyewitness encounters.  It's like they're saying: "Cheer up.  We're not dead yet!"  It's kind of like a "build it and they will come" sitch.  For example, the Eastern blue-bird.

Growing up, I never saw a single blue-bird.  A bird which was once so common and loved it had entered a realm of archetypiality: The Bluebird of Happiness.  But I never saw one; that is, until I moved here.  And they're everywhere!  If our neighborhood had a mascont bird, it would be the Eastern Bluebird.  Now, my thumbnail understanding of the fortunes of the eastern bluebird was that it had once been super common but it had niche nesting habits.  One thing led to another and there was a huge decline.  But there was human intervention; one of the rare cases of it being a good thing.  Nesting boxes with the "niche" they needed in place.  People put them out; the bluebird came back.  Here's a little article on it:

The blue bird (Blue Bird? Blue bird? Bluebird? bluebird?) is not quite so delightful when it comes to protecting it's young.  A couple of years ago I went to get the mail and came across our cat, Marissa, playing with a baby bird.  Or perhaps a fledgling.  She hadn't killed it.  She hadn't even really roughed it up (cats will often "play" with things they catch, not really wanting to kill it, but ending up doing just that by putting the creature in shock).  I got the bird away from her, unscathed and brought it in the house:

We kept it inside over night.  All baby birds kind of look the same.  I had no idea what it was.  But once the cat was sequestered, I put the bird back outside.  It peeped a few times.  Within ten minutes a pair of blue birds swept in and came at me like harpies.  I don't know if you've ever been the object of birdie wrath, but it can be quite intimidating; even from a bird as seemingly benign as a blue bird.  Eventually "Larry" hopped off into the woods under the watchful eyes of his guardians (I'm guessing Mom and Dad blue bird?) and it was a happy ending.  Huh,  Happy?  Blue bird of happiness?  Right?  Nice!
We really can be kind to our fine feathered friends if we just take some time and effort to figure out their needs and wants.  What's the phrase? One for the birds.  Usually used in a dismissive way; as though the birds of the world were unworthy.  We need the birds.  If the bugs go, the birds go.  If the birds go...well, what's next.
I don't know about you; but I don't really want to find out.  And I really don't want to live in a world without birds.
Please see part 3 for the wrap-up: The Bird Are Coming! / Part 3: Gay Pride Birds of a Feather Bonus!

CFR   6/15/24