Blue-Winged Warbler

Yesterday afternoon our friend returned from a bike ride and announced he had come upon a cluster of people gathered beside a nearby road, binoculars in hand. Intrigued, he stopped to ask what they were searching for.

“Blue-winged warblers,” was the reply.

I am not an ornithologist, although fresh out of college I worked as an editor at an environmental consulting firm, which is probably one of the first places I actually encountered the word, “ornithologist,” spoken aloud. I am not even a birder, meaning I don’t keep a list of all the birds I have spotted. I don’t even have bird feeders, although I did back in the day. At the time, my daily infusion of fresh sunflower seeds into our birdfeeders outside inspired the squirrels to build their nest inside the walls of our house. That was the end of bird feeders for us.

But I am not oblivious to birds. In fact, I love them. And — this will probably come as no surprise to you, if you know me or if you have been reading these posts for any length of time — the brighter the bird, the more I delight in seeing it.

Pileated woodpeckers roam our neighborhood. My husband and I love them so much that, a few years ago, when a microburst ripped the top of one of our large pine trees from its trunk about 12 feet up, we left the tall trunk standing so that the woodpeckers would have something to drill at. Sure enough, we have thrilled at the sight of pileated woodpeckers hammering away there at times.

At the other end of the size spectrum, hummingbirds flit around our yard. One morning I set the sprinkler going in my vegetable garden and headed out for a walk. As I rounded the corner to return to my house, the sun was shining just so, setting off each water droplet in a jewel-like prism, and there was a tiny hummingbird darting in and out of the sparkling stream of water. Oh, my heart!

Then there are the cardinals, gold finches, and sometimes even Baltimore orioles pecking the seeds from the blossoms in my flower beds. Not to mention the eagle flying overhead, or the owls I hear at dusk and sometimes even see if I am lucky. There are ducks in the small pond nestled in the woods behind the houses across the street. And believe it or not, last week my son and I both heard a loon over there. A loon! I’m sure it was just passing through. The pond is way too small and has far too few fish to support an actual loon, I think.

Or is it?

So, no, I am not a birder. I love birds though. So, when I heard a blue-winged warbler was just a couple of miles away, my ears perked right up. But I had never even heard of a blue-winged warbler, much less ever seen one, and I said so.

Surprisingly, our friend replied, “They’re yellow.”

People, that was not what I expected.

Blue-winged warbler. Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

According to the CornellLab All About Birds website, the blue-winged warbler range doesn’t typically extend all the way north to Maine. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Blue-winged_Warbler/maps-range.

The American Bird Conservancy website says the blue-winged warbler’s range is extending northward, however. Blue-winged Warbler - American Bird Conservancy.

As is the case for many birds, the blue-winged warbler numbers have fallen because of habitat loss. Maybe that’s why at least two of the warblers have come to town. (I know there are two, because my friend heard one singing on one side of the road and another answering on the other side of the road. He’s a musician, so I trust his ears.) Maybe they are a nesting pair. I hope so, because there will be more.

Today has been rainy and dreary. Plus, heaps of laundry have demanded my attention, so I put off going in search of the blue-winged warblers. But I have been thinking about them all day long. What keeps running through my mind is life’s quest to continue on, to do better, to find comfort and ease, to be safe and secure. That life force sends tiny birds to new territory when the old territory no longer serves as it once did. That life force must have whispered to those little birds, “Keep going! Farther north! Farther still!” It must have quieted when they found a spot of land in my town that looked just right to them.

And now a cluster of human beings pulls out their binoculars to catch a glimpse of bright yellow feathered bodies with the gray-blue wings. The people listen to the unique song the little birds sing to each other. They marvel and sigh and mark off a new name on their bird list. But, for the birds themselves, it’s really a matter of finding the right spot to make their nest, hatch their eggs, and raise their young. It’s a matter of what Kahlil Gibran once called “life’s longing for itself.”

It strikes me that human beings often move around for similar reasons — to seek safety and security and comfort and ease, to do better, to help their children do better. They move around because they are subject to the very same force of “life’s longing for itself.”

I work with asylum seekers here in Maine, and I can pretty much guarantee they have faced incredibly difficult journeys to get here, not to mention hefty (and, in today’s political climate, increasing) challenges once they arrive. They do it because they believe things will be better here both for their families and for themselves. In many ways, they are like those beautiful little birds, striking out in new territory because the old territory no longer serves as it once did. The new territory, for all its drawbacks, seems more promising.

Those birders, drawn by the chance to see new birds in the natural habitat of my hometown, remind me of myself, so often awed by the people I meet through my work. How lucky for me, I think, that I have the opportunity to befriend the asylum seekers, to help them in my small ways, and to learn from them. How lucky for me that my region seems to be a promising and hopeful place to land. How lucky for me that my work enlarges both my world and my heart.

I look forward to taking a little birding trip to see if I can find those blue-winged warblers. Those little birds have already taught me a great deal. They have helped me to find beauty in some of the most common and surprising places. They have shown me that, even though I might be expecting blue, I might actually find yellow instead. They have demonstrated the power of life’s longing for itself. And, even though they are so very, very small, they have reminded me that the world is so very, very large. I just love it when life and beauty surprise me.

Love,

Sylvia