I'm Having Blue Jay for Thanksgiving

Thank you for the overwhelmingly positive and beautiful response to "The Thing About Jemima." I  spend way too much time worrying about reader reaction to this or that revelation that's been bothering me for months or years until I finally up and say something. It was just wonderful to be able to say, "Here's the deal, and here's the kind of reaction I can handle, feeling as I do about it, so please let's stick to that." And to have everyone, to a person, come through with flying colors, writing lovely positive sentiments that are actually helping me through the glory, the wonder, the hope and, let's face it, the pain of it all. 

My Instagram and Facebook friend Denise wrote, 

"Thank you for sharing her plight. I can now pray for her safety."

To which I replied, "Oddly, that makes this near-pagan feel a lot better!"

Denise: "Ha ha! You be you, I'll be me. We both are for Jemima!" 

So thank you for keeping Jem and her anxious foster Ma in your hearts. When I got up November 20, I hadn't seen her for five days. But it was an easier wait than the eight-day Jemima-free marathon I'd lived through before my last series of sightings. The weather this week had been lousy, cold and cloudy, then warm, with torrential rain, then cloudy and cold, and it just didn't feel like blue jay weather to me. And I barely saw any blue jays around the feeders or yard. That didn't keep me from my vigil. I watched. I waited. I got a little writing done. I did not curl into a ball. But mostly, I hung in there and had faith that she'd come back at least to check in. Baby steps, improvement. 

I raised the blinds on the morning of November 20 and saw the red stain of sunrise spreading into a clear blue sky. Ahhhh. I will see my Jemima today, I thought. 

And sure enough, as soon as I put the corn and seed out, jays were bouncing all over the place. But not The Jay. 

So stuffed with cracked corn they look like bad taxidermists' mounts. Look at the leftmost bird. Glurp!

They're not Jemima, but oh they gladden my heart. I'm trying so hard to tell them apart as individuals, but it's really tough when the cast keeps changing.

A chipmunk (one of the scrappers from a previous post) streaks through and startles a jay into a little corvine capriole. Boing! Ha ha!!

Once again, Chippy sends the jittery jay airborne, while a red-bellied woodpecker says, "Ga-aaw-lee! What's up with you two?" Even brazen blue jays never quite get used to small bloodthirsty mammals zooming right under their feet. Nor should they.

Gosh, I look at those immaculate, intact wings, and just sigh. Jemima should be so lucky. But then it occurs to me that if she were that lucky, she might be in Georgia right now. It is what it is, and I am tremendously blessed to still be seeing a bird I released in mid-June, in November!

I tell Liam, "I know Jemima's going to show up this morning. I just have to be patient." The new bunny who is frequenting the feeder area (post the mid-August cleanout by Cindy the Bobcat) is amusing me greatly. This bunny has rather short ears and a very fat bottom, and it has a habit of coming out of the tangle behind the rhubarb, squirting up into the air with friskiness, then running back in. Soon it will be corn-fed and even fatter of bottom. Maybe I'll call it Julie.

So I watched the bunny for awhile.

And then she appears, at 8:53 AM, flying in from Stage Left. I'd know those tatty wings anywhere.

I start dancing around the studio snapping photos and laughing. I'm transformed from my everyday loose bundle of hope and anxiety to something approaching pure joy. I call Liam in and we holler endearments to her through the glass. She doesn't mind. 

What were you ever worried about? I don't understand you and your handwringing. I'm off doing my stuff. You go ahead and do your stuff. We'll get together now and then. That's how it goes.

My wise friend Margarethe, who has raised several corvid species and studies them always, has been sharing her experiences. Nothing like the voice of experience! She advised that Jemima's absences could get longer and longer as she builds independence and social networks.  She imparted this wisdom:

"You are both lucky and terribly exposed to hardship because you live right in Blue Jay territory, so Jemima could stay around. But as a juvenile, she still might have to join a more distant flock and find a new place of her own. Her disappearance could have any kind of reason. You seem to be extremely lucky as a mother. Now your Jay is giving you the experiences of anxiety that many face with their human teens. Open your heart and both joy and pain are inevitable. Lucky you."

Agreed on  my luck as a mother to humans. And agreed on that open heart--how, being open, it's ready to love, and to hurt, too, always. I tell myself, "She's a BIRD." She's a bird. 
How does a bird get so deep into my heart?  

She picks up some corn and flies up to the birch. With a good leap and a lot of flapping, she can get some altitude. Enough to get off the ground and into a tree. Yay for that.

And she appears at her buffet, this glorious stained-glass medley of blue, black and white, and you'd never know there was anything amiss, really, unless you noticed that she has no primaries poking out from under those gaudy tertials. 

She loads up on chicken, swallows some of it, then comes back to stuff her gular pouch full.

Ahh is she not the most beautiful? To think she used to let me kiss the top of that sweet head. 

Full up, she hops to the top of the arbor vitae and exits stage left, toward the back yard. This is a new direction! She flies to an ash tree, hops up to near the top, then launches herself into the clear blue air.

Her flight is lopsided, because she has more feathers on her left wing than her right. Phoebe: "She looks like some kind of crazy falling leaf."

But by God she makes it into the crown of the big pine, one of three that Bill and I planted in the winter of 1992. It's the last pine standing. The other two fell last spring. Jemima needs this tree. I need it, too. Please keep standing, Pine. You're a very useful tree.

She disappears into the needles and I can see the branch shaking as she disgorges and pecks apart the wad of chicken she brought. Her moveable feast.

Full as a tick, she puffs out her feathers and lets the sun warm her belly. She rests for about ten minutes. I'm so proud to see my Jem in the very top of the pine. Altitude is her friend. It's her 

hardest -won treasure. 

When she's done resting, I'm lucky to see her launch back toward the feeders. She uses the altitude she gained to have a really good flutter-glide back into the yard, making a grand entrance as jays love to do. I'm agog and thrilled at this bird's adaptability. At the fact that she can disappear for 5 days, 8 days at a time, then show up fit as a fiddle and twice as fat, to gladden her Ma's heart once more. 

How I would love to know where she's been. How far she goes. And how she does it.

This time, she comes in and finishes her chicken, which had been faithfully refreshed each morning, but lying untouched all week. Then she loads up on dry-roasted peanuts and heads toward the east hill. 

I run to the front window just in time to see her launch off the phone line on her long diagonal flight (the 130' one, but who's counting) to the east hill. She amazes me. The robin is also impressed.

I know I probably won't see her again today. And since Liam and I are heading east for Thanksgiving, I know I won't see her for at least another five days. And then I'm home for two days, then headed to Ecuador for ten days. Am I a nervous wreck about it all? Of course. Do I think she'll survive my leaving? Yep. If she needed my subsidy, she'd be there every day. 

But now I'm writing this post, all aglow with the thrill of having seen her at all. I learn so much from her every time she stops in. 

I turn back to my work and, through the closed windows, I hear the croak of a raven! Ravens are rare vagrants to southeast Ohio, but I've had a real run of sightings in October and November. I think I've seen two different pairs and maybe 3 singles. Oh, bring them on!! When I hear a raven I run out onto the back deck, because I have the best chance of photographing them over our meadow. I'm pretty sure that when we take in the game camera, there will be ravens on it. I don't think it's a coincidence that they inspect that part of the meadow--the meatpile is there! 

Sure enough, I'm incredibly lucky to see a raven, being harrassed by a crow.  And even luckier to get a sharp shot of the action (with willow tree photobomb).

Every time the crow dives close to the raven, the huge bird goes tokatok! It sounds just like someone knocking on a hollow log. A most amazing, loud, sonorous, percussive sound. 

My friend Greg Neise did a little Photoshop magic on my photo to better compare the relative shapes and sizes of crow and raven. Crow: top. Raven: lower bird. Look at the difference in their bills! And the length of that raven's wing! 

Seeing this pair of corvids, right after having such a wonderful session with Jemima, feels to me like a great  blessing, a benediction. A lucky sign.

What better Thanksgiving bounty than three corvids in one yard? And Jemima, well and independent and still, somehow, flying free. Keep her in your heart.

This post is dedicated to my sweet friend Melanie and beautiful Alex

 @myecocentriclife on Instagram. Go give her some love.

Sending it with a chorus of blue jay yells and all the love in the world.

Liam is 18!

At eight months, he was spherical, and not always as jolly as he appears here; fussy he was much of the time, thanks to his tiny Eustachian tubes. We eventually got those fixed. 

Fussiness aside, there was a sweetness about that baby boy that I could not walk by. I just had to kiss him, every time. 

All those kisses added up and soaked in, I think, and the older he got, the sweeter he got.

The willow tree that's just crowning up over the deck railing here was planted, a slender whip, when I was big with Liam. And now, 18 years later, it's leaning perilously downslope, a tremendous tree, too big for its trunk, apparently, from the way it suddenly throws off pieces of itself, as if it's done with them.

And the little boy who had to stretch to see over the railing is leaning over it now, with a faraway look in his soft blue eyes. 

And his big sister is still looking over his shoulder, making sure he's OK. 

They're a unit, always better together. That has been the greatest gift--the way the two of them blend together, like root beer and ice cream, making something better than either alone. 

 We took her to Maine to look at a college, and she wound up staying. Ah, they were so young.

And now she's about to graduate, and he's the one looking at colleges now. 

They're both taking off. 

 Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving. But how can they know it's time for them to go?

Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming...I have no thought of time. 

Who knows where the time goes?--Sandy Denny, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?"

It's a great gift to be able to step outside the moment, and recognize the sweetest times as they are happening. A fine game of Jungle Jem, interrupted by a jealous little man who thought Jem's exercise bars were supposed to be petting HIM. That was only May! It was six months ago; it was yesterday; it was forever ago.

We were there for it. We lived it to the fullest. No love was spared. Always, there's been love, so much love. They'll carry that as long as they live. 

We haven't missed a moment, haven't missed a chance to say I love you. 

Today, I was headed into town to try to do too many things. I go into town so seldom now, all the little things pile up into big wads. And the more I put it off, the bigger the wad that awaits me in town. So be it.

I took the back roads, because it was a rainy November day and the sassafras and the oaks are  on fire, sizzling in the mist. I saw the gray cow named Christine standing,  negative bovine space against the rich autumn foliage, and I couldn't pull over fast enough.

I parked about a hundred yards up, grabbed my big rig with the long lens, and began loping back to capture her beauty. I was going along pretty good, almost there, when a car pulled up alongside me. The driver was rapping along to the radio in a deep voice. He had a huge smile on his face. It was Liam. And of course, because he's Liam, he stopped to talk with his Ma. And because he's Liam, I had to give him a kiss.

We'd both taken the back road on a rainy November day, me, reluctantly headed to town; he, joyfully headed home. Because for Liam and me, it's all about color, and heading home.

"Hi ma.  As I drove up I thought I saw a little black inkblot, running alongside you. To your right."

I had no doubt he did. How I wished I could see that inkblot, too. I cried a little and then we laughed, too, at the likelihood of his seeing anyone else but his mother, out here in rural Ohio running along a  country road, carrying a big camera, running back to shoot some cows. Town-wads be damned. There are cows and mist and colors. And those are what will matter in the end.

How could I not? They are anthracite to the trees' fire. And I've always liked placing inkblots in a landscape.

 Liam shoots cows, too. Last summer, making Bully's portrait. Bully, who would let us rub his curly forehead. 

After Liam pulled away, leaving me to my cowtography, a raven flew over, croaking sonorously. Ravens aren't supposed to be here in Appalachian Ohio, but I've seen four in the last three weeks. A pair, cavorting over the orchard, just last Saturday!  As the raven croaked along, two red-headed woodpeckers answered back. I swear, the birds are always talking to me, following me. I need to listen to them, get out more. I'm gonna do that.

If this isn't the oddest birthday post. All I'm trying to say is that I love this boy, who appreciates everything so deeply, and is so gentle and kind, quiet and gracious. 

I'm trying to say Happy Birthday to you, dear Liam, in a circuitous, cow in autumn, raven croaky way. 

Phoebe is much better at saying happy birthday! A mysterious soft package arrived yesterday, and Liam had instructions to open it immediately. 

There was a note in it that said, 

"Welcome to adulthood, little buddy.

 Here's the first thing you'll need.

 Love, 

Your big sis"

When I came home this evening, a giant flying squirrel came out to help me with the groceries. He had come straight home and climbed into his Adult Onesie.

"I was cold. And this is the best thing when you're cold."

Liam, you're all about taking joy in simple pleasures. That will take you farther in life than anything else. It will take you home.

And I still can't walk by you without kissing you. Happy 18, WilLiam Henry Thompson IV!

Love always, Ma

A Raven Comes to Call

We live in Appalachian Ohio, but just in the foothills. What we have are hills, not mountains. The common raven nests at high elevations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but there may be but one pair nesting in all of Ohio, as we are short of mountains. Nevertheless, in the last five years, we've had four records of common ravens flying over our yard. As our eloquent friend and Ohio Rare Bird Records Committee poobah Jim McCormac put it, that makes us "the only Ohio backyard with multiple records of this jumbo croaker."
This is Liam's willow, planted the summer of his birth. Just to show you that it's indeed in our backyard.

The first record came on March 15, 2003, when my artist friend Cindy House and I were standing in our backyard. Bill was inside playing the guitar. Groop groop groop groop! croaked a raven. Cindy heard it and didn't give it a second thought, since she was visiting from Vermont where common raven was a yard bird for her. I heard it and started jumping up and down and flapping my arms and hollering for Bill. We saw the bird flying over the orchard, croaking all the way, but by the time I got Bill out, it was gone. Arrrgh. Anyway, it was #180 for our yard list. It was headed southwest.

On September 29, 2005, our friend Wezil Walraven, a professional bird guide, contender for Funniest Man on the Planet and all around sharpie, was lying out in a chaise in our front yard, skywatching, when a common raven flew over, croaking, and disappeared headed north. He figured it might be a good record, even though he was visiting from Arizona, so he mentioned it at lunch. I jumped up and down and flapped my arms again.

On April 7, 2008, while I was in Ithaca, Bill heard what sounded like a common raven flying over, but then a bunch of crows started cawing and he wondered if perhaps it was just an odd vocalization from a crow.

On April 9, 2008, Bill and I were preparing to take a birdwalk around the yard. "I'm going to leave my camera inside," he said, and I said, "OK, I'll take my long lens, in case we see something good that needs its picture taken." We had just rounded the corner of the house when we heard the unmistakable groop groop groop of a honking common raven. Our eyes bugged out and we shouted, "RAVEN!" at the same moment. The bird was huge, coming low over our driveway and the roof of our house, hollering all the way. It landed on our roof and croaked some more. This may have had something to do with the fact that Bill and I were croaking like ravens for all we were worth, trying to get the bird to linger long enough to be immortalized by my Canon. While flipping out that a raven was sitting on our roof, I was frantically trying to get my autofocus to listen to me. "Get it, Zick! Get it!" Bill urged, which helped a lot. My autofocus ground away fruitlessly, focusing on everything but the bird, so I switched to manual focus and managed to fire a couple of shots, to document common raven in our backyard at long last. Like the March '03 raven, it was headed southwest. A phalanx of crows came out to harrass it. I felt sorry for the raven, just croaking away, looking for one of its own kind. Bill realized that his bird two days earlier was probably being harrassed by crows as well.
The tail was a bit molty as you can see. The heavy bill and eagle-like wings are typical of common ravens. Man, it's nice to have a picture, however dull.

I've had a bit of friendly static from people who want to hear all about Ithaca and the Lab of Ornithology. The problem is that there is too much going on right now to carve out the time to write it up and edit all the photos. I've been working like a mule, reclaiming the yard from the grip of winter, tilling and planting, mowing (thanks Bill!) and weeding. I cleaned the pond, bleccch. Sucked up about ten billion toad eggs and then they laid ten billion more. Beats sucking up tadpoles, I figure. The peas and lettuce I planted April 9 are coming up! Meanwhile, both kids have softball practices two nights a week, which means I have to magically produce dinner by 5 pm and drive them to different fields for a four-hour block of time. Whee! While rehearsing for a Swinging Orangs gig tomorrow night. Here's the poster that Andy Hall, our awesome drummer/designer made.

Something about it makes me belly laugh. We are very much looking forward to playing for other parents from the school, and to making lots of tips which we'll donate to Phoebe's class trip to Pittsburgh. I have no idea what to wear, but it will not be cropped pants, nor will it be hula pants, nor a purple squall jacket. It will be something in between, or perhaps beyond. Purple cropped hula pants?

Have a wonderful weekend. We will!