The Delightful Horror of Family Birding. Eli J. Knapp
“I promise, Dada.”
We had a great drive to the lake, chatting about all things from Hot Wheels to telephone poles. But upon arrival at the well-wooded lake, I admonished Ezra again about the need for quiet. Solemnly, he nodded.
I scanned the waters and saw a flock of likely mergansers at the far edge. We’d have to approach stealthily through the woods.
“Ready, Ez?”
“I’m ready, Dada.”
“Okay, let’s go. Remember, don’t make a sound.” We entered a thick stand of conifers and slowly picked our way to the other side of the lake, being careful not to step on loud twigs and leaves. Ezra mimicked every footstep I took and never said a word. “We’re almost there,” I whispered. “Great job.” Ezra smiled back and flashed me a thumbs-up.
We crouched low behind a log and slowly lifted our heads. There they were. Right in front of us, two doting male mergansers paddled alongside half a dozen earth-toned females. The afternoon sun’s slanting rays lit up the males’ white head crests like flags of surrender. Wanting to remember the scene, I pulled out my camera and snapped a few shots. Euphoric, I glanced at Ezra to see if he was enjoying it, too.
He wasn’t. His smile was gone. His eyes were pinched shut, his cheeks were red, and he had both hands covering his mouth. Uh-oh.
“Ez, are you okay?” He nodded his head feebly but wouldn’t open his eyes or pull his hands away from his mouth. Confused, I picked him up and crashed back out through the woods, this time oblivious to the sound we made. When we reached the roadside, I set him down.
“AAAAHHHH-CHOO!” Ezra’s head shot forward like a released bowstring. He hacked, sputtered and wheezed. As for me, I started laughing uncontrollably. In between laughter, I turned to Ezra.
“Why did you wait so long to sneeze?!”
“You said not to make a sound!”
“Well done, Ez! Did you see those beautiful mergansers?”
“What mergansers?” he replied matter-of-factly. I doubled over again.
The setting October sun lit up the orange-red trees like flames as we drove home. With his colossal sneeze now behind him, Ezra made up for lost time, filling the air with a string of questions and non sequitur proclamations typical of a four year old. It’s a time I’ll treasure someday when he’s an uncommunicative and self-conscious teenager.
The decision to bird or spend time with Ezra needn’t be an either/or. I’ve learned it’s a both/and. We had time together, made a priceless memory, and I even saw my birds.
Next time maybe Ezra will see them, too.
Northern flicker
Colaptes auratus
4 • A FLICKER OF LIFE
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Eli, you have to do something! Oh, I can’t bear to watch this!” I leapt out of my chair in the other room and rushed to the sound of my wife’s voice. Few words could prompt such immediate action. But these words I feared.
As I rounded the corner into the living room, my adrenalized fear suddenly ebbed. Everybody was alive. Linda, six-year-old Ezra, and three-year-old Indigo stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the window, eyes downcast. They appeared to be—and were—attending a wake.
There on the deck lay a northern flicker. Seen from afar, these ant-obsessed birds are arresting, an intricate hodge-podge of speckles and stripes. Up close, they are downright exquisite—as if a zebra and leopard lent their patterns to a professional painter. This was a male, his black moustache (or “malar stripe”) slicing down his cheeks.
The silence was a rare counterpoint to our typical household cacophony. And it matched the flicker’s motionless body. Until it convulsed, flipping its head back over its body as its yellow-splashed wings whipped outward. And then it convulsed again. And again.
Linda, ever empathetic to anything with a pulse (with a glaring—and hypocritical—exception of mice and snakes), couldn’t help herself. “I can’t take this!” Her voice faltered as she sped out of the room. Ezra, unable to endure his mother’s despair, ran after her, mimicking her saddening shrieks. That left Indigo and me alone at the funeral.
Although I had already pieced together the puzzle due to the new smudges on the window’s exterior, I couldn’t resist quizzing my uncharacteristically stoical three-year-old.
“What happened?” I asked, looking down at her.
“The birdie hit the window,” she said, without any trace of emotion. “Is it dead?”
I said nothing as the flicker flipped one last time and then lay lifeless. My daughter’s question hung in the air like the bird-feeder hanging five feet above the flicker’s head. Wishing again for parental blueprints of when to introduce what, I decided this was a moment of truth.
“Yeah, it’s dead,” I replied.
As soon as I said this, one of my western New York heroes, Roger Tory Peterson, came to mind. It was simple association. Growing up in nearby Jamestown, New York, he was captivated by this very species, the northern flicker, as an eleven-year-old boy. Similarly, he had discovered a listless flicker on an oak branch near his home. Not knowing if it was dead or asleep, Peterson picked it up and cradled it. The next moment, the flicker sprang back to life and exploded from his arms. The bird had only been temporarily impaired or perhaps exhausted after a long migration.
This phenomenon of sudden recoveries is not uncommon to homeowners who feed birds and witness window collisions that temporarily render birds witless. What surprised me was that this was a flicker, a woodpecker that smashes its head against immovable objects for a living. Woodpeckers are equipped with the very best concussion prevention gear available. Micro-CT scans have revealed tiny pockets of air—shock absorbers—in the woodpecker’s skull, unlike the solid-wall skulls of most other birds. Another small cushion sits between the base of the bill and the skull. The most effective of the flicker’s evolutionary airbags, however, may be its remarkable tongue. Unlike all other birds, woodpecker tongues connect to the hyoid bone, which exits the skull at the base and wraps up and over the skull, anchoring to the forehead. The wraparound tongue isn’t just a cushion; it’s also a tourniquet. It effectively pinches the jugular vein while the bird hammers away, increasing the volume of blood within the skull. This softens the impact within the skull rather than just outside it.
These adaptations explain why affiliates from the concussion-prone NFL have shown a sudden interest in bird watching. They may also account for the recovery of young Peterson’s flicker. Regardless, he found the moment miraculous. So miraculous, in fact, that he credited it with changing the course of his life and leading him into a life of birds. This soon spawned his famous field guides. It was my father’s Peterson guide to the birds of eastern North America, which I flipped through incessantly as a boy by the windowsill, that helped lead me into a life of bird appreciation. So I owe a debt to the flicker as well.
But Peterson’s flicker had resurrected. This one, with rumpled feathers and clouded eyes, needed interment. So out the door I walked. Untouched by the empathetic spillover shown by her mother and brother, Indigo followed me out the door. I bent over the flicker and picked it up. Without any prompting, Indigo extended her index finger and slid it delicately along the bird’s back. I studied her face as she did so. Her slightly furrowed brow and focused gaze revealed little. Then, as the tip of her small forefinger disappeared in the fullness of the flicker’s feathers, her eyebrows went up, almost imperceptibly. When her finger reemerged toward the tail feathers, she smiled and her entire demeanor softened with wonder. Wordlessly, I mimicked her motion. Together, our two forefingers