March 2008

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Friday was cold, at least until you broke into a run. Taking a breather at the top of an embankment, and peering down to a creek recently freed from its covering of snow and ice, we were joined by a Chickadee.

It alighted on a nearby tree, curious, considering us. It then moved to a closer tree, still inquisitive, about a metre away, before making its way straight for me. A brazen flight, to end perhaps on my head, or shoulder, had I not retreated, and the bird then done the same. It returned to its previous perch, and then flew away.

When animals lose their fear of humans, I’m told, it can be a sign of desperation. The small bird certainly looked rougher than some I’ve seen recently. Naturally, then, I imagine it to be starving. Reason lends credence to the idea; the remaining snow cover makes foraging difficult at this time of year, and the few bird-feeders upon which these Chickadees might depend are probably not as richly stocked this year, due to deep drifts and ice that makes refilling them a chore. Certainly that was a hungry Chickadee.

We returned home, only to head out again, this time with toasted sunflower seeds, a few slices of twelve-grain bread. Soon we reached the same hillside.

“Make that chickadee sound, Ror,” Jennie said.

“What sound?”

“That one you made.”

Helpless — and no doubt ridiculous — chirpings went unanswered. Brisk winds made it hard to whistle. And so we waited, palms upturned and extended. A beggar’s gesture, though it is we who would give. The winds persisted, and no birds came.

A grim hypothesis: “Maybe it already starved to death.”

“I thought that too.”

Spring is a scamp, and fickle these days to be sure, but it is back with enough wherewithal to end this hermit-blogger’s hibernation. And after a winter of fierce highs and lows, he cannot help but welcome a kind bit of mud, and that foreign, trickling sound — running water! — from nearby ditches.

Today’s walk was a quick tramp down highway 22, over to a neighbour’s place. Conditions ran the gamut as sun, wind, and clouds competed for superiority — leaving causality the poor pedestrian who finds himself at odds with balm and bluster, and tempting him to accept rides offered by pitying driversby. Indeed, Dirletonians are kind folk. But to drive is to miss March’s competing smells: thuja, woodsmoke, and manure.

The window-thermometer gave up the ghost, I remember, succumbing to January’s worst, as we all thought we might do. It fell into a snowbank, and disappeared. Yet this fate is all but forgotten now. Outside, we can plainly see that it is warm enough, as can our impecunious tenants — the squirrels in the roof, the mice and voles in the walls — most of whom have given their notice, at least for the next little while.