Bird Watching

This post is dedicated to my mom. I vividly remember her green, cloth-covered Field Guide to Birds that sat conveniently on the engine of the two-toned van with the sliding door named Betty. Often, somewhere between here and there, Mom would let out with an excited “Bill stop the car! It’s a Pileated Woodpecker!” or some other unusual bird. On rides between Bloomer, WI and Winona, MN to watch the barges float down the locks on the Mississippi, we kept our eyes out for herons, egrets and cranes. When the Great Snowy Owl made his appearance, there was great rejoicing.


The service bus picks me up at 7:13 and arrives at school about a half an hour later.I sit in the princess seat in the front. The city falls away to tree covered hills, military grounds, a random shack with a slow stream of smoke rising from it. Packs of dogs roam the road side and fight over trash near the trees. In the fall, flocks of birds, probably seagulls, gather under a grey sky. Light reflects off their flapping wings, and the whole flock twinkles, white then light grey. Smaller migrating birds form one shifting body, dipping, swooping densely packed, then more loosely so, but never crossing an invisible boundary. About a month ago, I began to notice massive brown hawks, sentinels on fence posts and bare trees. I count them, collect the sight of them like trophies, sometimes as many as four before or after the school day. One recent morning, shortly before arriving at the turn-off, I sat trophy-less in the princess seat, but was rewarded by a group of thirty storks, resting on their way between here and there. The following morning there were seven, and then they were gone. One stork picking at the ground on his long spindly legs near the roadside is an impressive sight, a whole mess of them even more so. A friend once told me about migrating storks gathering near the Bosphorus in September, but I’ve missed them so far. Yesterday, the bus passed a mass of grey, slender-necked and long-legged birds, swirling in a widening, ascending spiral to veer off individually in an irregular line heading northwest.


I don't ask Suleyman to stop the service bus. For some reason, I like to keep these moments private.