BY HARRY WEEKES
“It was the most beautiful bird.”
An unfair way to begin because it puts you anywhere in the world. So, pretend you are at home somewhere in the Wood River Valley and your recently arrived houseguest greets you with the above. What do you think?
Of course, no one doesn’t respond to an opening like this. A person doesn’t hear this and say, “Oh, great, what a wonderful observation.” Un-uh. Someone says this and the question-curiosity switch gets flipped.
“What was it?”
“I have no idea.”
As your guest is from the East, you only know that the bird is not one with which she is familiar.
“What did it look like?”
“It had big round wings. And it kind of undulated through the sky.”
“Where were you?”
“Right in town. It was white and black and had a really long tail—I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Somewhere in here your pattern recognition software overrides the framing of the conversation, which erroneously led you down a rabbit hole filled with all of the majestic birds you know, and now you respond with a kind of incredulous question, “Magpie?”
“Is that what they are?”
It often takes a different perspective to appreciate something with which you are familiar. That perspective can be gained through new eyes. For me, especially with magpies, this different perspective and its accompanying appreciation comes with the change of seasons. As the first subfreezing days of October return and the inevitable dusting of snow whitens the Boulders. As the deer return to the fields en masse in Indian Creek, all plump and fuzzy. As a certain energy creeps into most birds, an energy that makes me realize that at any moment they will dart off to the south. This is when I re-focus on the magpies.
The magpies, whose squawking calls are abrasive. The magpies, who move around in raucous bunches poking at roadkill snakes and chasing grasshoppers on the lawn. The magpies, who make spherical nests that are literally piles of sticks stuffed into branches.
As we turn toward winter, and so much prepares to leave or go dormant, the magpies stay. In this there is something we cannot overlook, a certain binding site solidarity that is the emblem of the resident.
As the other birds glide, flap, flock and lumber their way south, the magpies don’t. They, like us, are here for the duration. And it is at this time that I really see them. Of course, the backdrop is incredible. The sky is cobalt and the leaves are as yellow and orange and red as they are going to get. Then, in the right light, a big magpie will float by and land, perfectly lit, and I will notice they aren’t really black at all, but rather a dazzling iridescent-blue and purple and green. The colors flash and then vanish, even as the bird stays.
And the magpies stay. Companions on this part of our yearly journey around the sun, too.
There is something I like about this. Something familiar. Something beautiful.
