The Nature of Birdwatching

My tarot reading table overlooks a small grove of mature hardwood trees that, unsurprisingly, provide a home to all sorts of wild urban creatures. Squirrels of course, and possums, raccoons, myriad varieties of birds, both permanent residents and migratory, and also the creatures who sustain them. Every now and then, a hawk will choose one of the larger branches close to my window for a picnic spot. By the time I notice the commotion, it’s usually too late to tell what the main course was, and I don’t really want to know. I get it, the circle of life and all that, but I’d rather not have a front row seat for that particular part of the cycle.

Last week, Marlowe, my cat, pounced up onto the middle of my table, disrupting my tarot reading. This is a normal occurrence but, on this day, his intention wasn’t to dominate my space (entirely anyway). He perched on the very edge of the table, chirping at the activity just outside the window and that’s when I saw the birds. Not just a few of them, as there always are, but an entire flock. The trees are full of large, thick leaves this time of year and the birds were in perpetual motion, hunting bugs or insects. It was difficult to determine exactly what species they were as they moved so quickly, but I could tell they were different from the sparrows, doves, cardinals, and blue jays that normally occupy the trees around my window.

Except, upon closer inspection, they did look like cardinals. Brown cardinals. They weren’t female red cardinals. They looked similar, but the coloring was off. I googled brown cardinals (what did we do before Google?) and discovered they were Pyrrhuloxia, commonly known as Desert Cardinals.

Southeast Texas isn’t too far, geographically, from the western edge of their normal habitat, but they’re called Desert Cardinals for a reason. They prefer an arid environment. Yet, there I was, watching a flock of at least fifty of them hunting in trees that are lush and green with moss and vines because of the damp, subtropical environment. In the rain, no less.

They “shouldn’t” have been there, but they did not know that, nor did they seem to care. They were enjoying the trees, their meal and even the bath provided by the rain shower. The textbook definition of their nature would indicate that they were living outside of it. But by the paradox that actually rules nature, they were completely in accordance with it.

My mother used to feed her backyard birds all kinds of scraps, with stale bread and potato skins being their favorite. Whenever I took her out for dinner, she would wrap the remains of her baked potato in a napkin and slip it into her purse “for the birds”. Sometimes the napkin would contain an eggroll if we had Chinese food, but she would give that to her next-door neighbor, which is another story entirely. She grew up during the depression and let nothing go to waste. My only point was she could have asked for a take-away container, but she saw no need for that when she had a perfectly good used napkin. My mom was the most gentle and agreeable person I’ve ever known but she could stand firm. I learned to just let her put leftover food in her purse.

The birds in my mother’s suburban backyard were mostly house sparrows and crows. Many of her neighbors erected specially designed avian domiciles high on poles over their backyards and filled feeders to the brim with a special seed blend, hoping to attract the coveted Purple Martins on their way through Central Texas each spring. Every year the Martins came through, nested in their special apartments high above the people desperate for a glimpse of them… and feasted on the scraps in my mom’s backyard. This pleased my mother to no end, although she felt a bit sorry for her neighbors.

The Purple Martins preferred potato skins to expensive seeds and fruits. The Desert Cardinals weren't aware that they shouldn't have been having a flock party in my grove of trees. For that matter, neither should all the other birds, possums, bats, and raccoons who now walk the blurry lines between nature and humans since we moved in and took over this patch of forest. They adapted, without giving it any thought whatsoever.

The primary focus of my Daoist training was teaching me the importance of living in alignment with my own nature. Water takes the path of least resistance so it should have come as no surprise when a couple of major life upheavals finally forced me into my groove. My Shifu tried to warn me, on more than one occasion. I didn't really get it. Until I did.

Three years ago, I packed up my work necessities and set up a home office in the same room as my tarot table. I moved from a windowless, florescent space 46 stories in the sky, to a work-from-home setup facing the same grove of trees through the same window and my views on a lot of things began to shift. In a parallel thought, or maybe it’s a paradox, instead of my external world changing around me, my internal world evolved.

Once my work life moved into my home space, I knew I would never go back to the office. I began mentally and financially planning for the day I would no longer have to decide between my career and the life I wanted to create.

On the surface, things in my life did not appear to be as they were supposed to because they were so different. I spent much more time at home, mostly due to the pandemic, but partly due to my husband’s health crisis. While the world around me went off the rails, I became more grounded and content than I had ever felt before. Sure, I had concerns about the future, but my entire focus was on the present. I walked through each moment of each day, as if it were the only moment that mattered, because it was. And when that one was over, I focused on the next. One foot in front of the other, one situation or crisis at a time, is how I got through the days that turned into weeks, months and now, years. This has become my default approach to living and I realize now that I am very much like my mother in this regard.

Three years seems like a lifetime ago. Or it seems like just yesterday. I’m the same person I was then. I am also different. I’m naturally intuitive and in touch with my emotions so understanding and following the concept of the flow of water has always come easier to me. Watching the birds has led me to contemplate how they follow the flow of the air stream in the same manner as the fish follow the current of the water. They use the directional force of nature to travel effortlessly, and I have begun to grasp the concept of cerebral flow that has always seemed beyond my understanding. Logical thinking makes sense because our thoughts are most clear when we allow them to flow without overthinking.

Sometimes I think I would like to be more like those migratory birds and swimming fish. This stems from the mobility issues I've developed over the past few years. At some point I’m going to have to address the arthritis in my hips in a big way (also like my mother), but I haven’t yet come to terms with my fears surrounding the process. This is partly why I’ve connected with the birds. Even if I could fly away somewhere else, I would probably stay right where I am, but as soon as a choice is taken away from us, we immediately want it, the choice, more than we did in the first place. That’s just human nature. I think of the possibility of moving to new locations, trying new things, or even things I used to be able to do, but can’t, because of my limitations. Then I lay out my tarot cards, in a tree-house home that I love, to read for myself or others, or I open my laptop and wrap myself in the words and stories inside my head, and I bring myself back to this moment. This one, right now, where I am writing to you and there’s nowhere else I would rather be. Besides maybe watching the birds.

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