Songbirds in the sun

Saw a red-winged blackbird this morning. In the summer they perch like sentinels on fenceposts along every highway in the state, but then they all go away and we forget about them for a while until we spot a flash of color and there they are again.

Last week a flock of robins descended on my lawn en masse, held a brief food fest, and then moved on. They wouldn't stand still to be counted but I got to a dozen before I gave up. Where do they go?

This morning I heard songbirds singing a lovely whistling tune I didn't recognize. This is not surprising; I'm good at visual recognition but the birdsongs I know can be counted on the fingers of one hand: kingfishers, hawks, chickadees, crows, and the strange croaking "fronk" of the blue heron. Geese, of course; everyone knows geese. The resident poultry expert can distinguish among the calls of many different types of geese, ducks, and other wildfowl, but what do you expect of a man whose childhood hobby required a chicken coop with room for 100 birds?

Last spring I followed the distinctive song of the oriole and finally spotted the bird sitting in the top of a sycamore, but apparently Mr. O didn't find a mate because the call and bird disappeared soon thereafter. In the upper meadow once I followed a metallic "chip" to its source and found an indigo bunting sitting at the top of a gnarly old apple tree, but then the next time I followed what I thought was the same sound to the same tree, I found a boring old cardinal. My bird book wants me to hear things that sound like "to-whit, to-whee" or "drink your tea," but my birds don't speak that language.

I couldn't find the source of the lovely birdsong this morning and now I have no clear memory of its melody. On the other hand, the other morning my clock radio woke me from a sound sleep by loudly playing the annoying 70s song "Seasons in the Sun" and I could not get that tune out of my mind for the rest of the day. (I'd like to know who fiddled with the dials to cause this catastrophe, but no one has stepped forward to claim responsiblity.) Why can't I delete from my memory wretched songs like "Seasons In the Sun" and replace them with the songs of birds? We'd have joy, we'd have fun, we'd have seasons in the sun, but best of all, I'd be able to report accurately on the birds I encountered this morning.