Birds A Source Of Inspiration

Birds can be a source of inspiration to those of us growing older in this constantly changing world. From all my childhood memories, it is only the birds that have not changed their personalities or appearances from when I first knew them as a gangling, tree-climbing child.

Houses we knew and loved are torn down, gurgling streams we waded in as children, picnicked by as young lovers, camped by with our families, have been filled in by huge earth moving machines. Forests we walked in with the soughing wind, woods that shaded jack-in-the-pulpits, trilliums, and hepaticas have fallen victim to the chain saw. Concrete replaces the forested beauty of the mountain valley.

My brothers and sisters, as well as childhood friends, have moved away from the North Georgia mountain. All have grayed and wrinkled and grown older with the passing years. Personality changes in us are not at all rare, but birds never change at all from the way we knew them when we were roaming youngsters learning the birds and their ways.

Recently, I visited my childhood home and was deeply moved by what I found. The window panes were shattered, the mill work was stripped, wallpaper hung in shreds and the stairs hung precariously from the second story.

Nothing was as I had remembered it as a child until we reached the front porch. There, on a ledge of a window, sat a phoebe on her nest, just as a phoebe has sat some sixty years before. No doubt she was a ten-times removed great grandchild of the phoebes I once knew. Before we left the male called out to us "phoebe-ee-eee" irritably, exactly as his ancestor had called to a mountain lass more than a half century before.

The orchard below the house where the orchard oriole sang each spring was gone. It had succumbed to a growing forest of maples, poplars and oaks.

I climbed an apple tree as a child, I remember, half-hiding myself with foliage, and watched the orioles build their green grass nest on a sloping limb. As the sun grew hotter each day, the grass nest dried to a pretty yellow. The nest was so low that from my perch I could see the eggs, bluish-white, with purplish-brown splotches. One was laid each day until the clutch of five was complete.

After a long time, counting in childhood days, five ugly little creatures hatched. I watched them grow and was disappointed the day I found the nest empty.

My dad told me that within a few weeks, when they learned to fly well, they would be on their way to South America, not to return until the next spring.

Each spring we eagerly awaited the return of these colorful black and orange birds. When they arrived we knew spring had crept into the mountain valley, over the hills, along the woods, roads, highways and gurgling brooks and singing waterfalls.

Beautifully feathered, singing birds . . . linking childhood memories with the aging years . . . a source of comfort and delight.

Sights & Sounds of a Mountain Childhood

A long time ago I lived in a small village in the North Georgia mountains. In its summers, I enjoyed the simplicity of living and never knew boredom. Those long, sun-filled, mountain- breezed days would last forever, or so it seemed.

There were no radios, televisions or telephones. Communication in the village, over the hills and to distant places came about through mail, foot, automobile, newspapers, books and magazines.

Today's youth would complain, "There's nothing to do. Nothing ever happens here. I'm bored."

But big events did happen in those serene hills. Birds! In April, the big experience was the return of the birds. The coming-home-song of the wood thrush would jolt me out of bed. Quickly dressing, I would rush out into the nippy dawn to find the speckled-throated songster.

And down in the greening orchard, the clear sweet song of the bright indigo bunting bubbled out over the countryside. This small bird began singing as the first sunbeams wrapped the highest hills in light and continued all day long, literally.

For as long as I can remember, phoebes nested on a window frame of my parent's bedroom. We welcomed them home when first we heard the male call in an irritable voice, "phoebe, phoebee," as if he wanted his mate to hurry up and get busy with house building.

Then there's the summer tanager I put to bed each summer night. A big white oak stood below the wall of the front yard and near the road. As darkness crept over the land, I sat under the tree and listened for the tanager's bedtime chatter. "Quick, pick-it-up," he taunted a half dozen times. He seemed to be telling the family to clean up the clutter before hitting the hay. He sputters and spits a few times and then everything is quiet. He goes through this "to-bed" procedure every night, sleeping on the same grizzled mattress under the same green blanket. I wait until he's quiet, then I go into the house. Deepening dusk draws the shutters for the night for both the bird and me.

Our house had a tremendous peaked roof made of weathered shingles. Up from the ground and over the tin-roofed porch, and up the peaked two-story roof, between the two chimneys at either end of the house, ran a lightening rod. It dropped from the peak down the back roof and into the ground at the well porch.

We used to play on the lightening rod. Scrambling up the rod and holding tight, we reached the roof peak. Straddling the peak and grasping the rod, we scampered across the roof to the far chimney. Here, we were in the treetops with the chickadees and titmice and blue jays. And we could look down on the mimosa tree with sometimes a dozen nectar-feeding, ruby-throated hummingbirds. From this exalted position, the horizon expanded over countless mountains and we could see Amicoloa Falls dashing down its rocky slide into a jagged mountain stream some sixteen miles away.

Spanking after spanking we received when we were caught on the roof, but the spankings never deterred us from experiencing this thrill again and again when we could slip to the roof without our mother knowing it.

There's something about the returning birds that sends my senses reeling. The bird chorus that comes with the mountain dawn awakened me to a medley of songs and calls and inspired me to rise with the birds and enjoy the freshness of the morning.

My childhood in the mountains taught me much and has made my life tremendously richer. I feel sorry for today's youngsters who have their sense of wonder of the great outdoors dulled by having only computers and TVs to tell them of the big events of summer days exploding all around them.