To Be A Bird

To be a bird, awakening with the first light of the sun, taking every opportunity to snag a gnat or fly from the circulating mountain air, building a nest to suit the needs of the season, and singing until the sun sets each day. I am that bird, too. 

I remember as a young child pulling out my Christmas stocking to hang on the fireplace.  My mom had made every single person in my immediate family and the pets a handmade stocking. Each one tells a story about that person or pet. My twin brother, Sam, and my stockings showed the life cycle of birds. It started out with two eggs in the nest, then two fledglings in the nest, onto two young birds with feathers, and lastly a bird in full flight. 

My mom would tell me, “This is how I felt when I was pregnant with you and Sam. I knew you would start out in my nest, just fledglings. You would depend on me and grow stronger until you were old enough to start spreading your wings.” 

Flying takes practice, though, so it would take some time. The last bird to be sewn onto the stocking was a white dove practically flying off the stocking; this symbolized when it was time for us to go off on our own. 

My childhood started out with birds each and every day. Something I still reflect on with joy is waking up to the Mountain Bluebirds singing, which I could hear through my cracked window. Hearing is one thing, but seeing is another. Out the back door was a frenzy. The type of sight where one could not help but look up at the chaotic, orchestrated movements of flight up above. Sometimes it seemed as though a particular bluebird would hover in midair and look right into you, and I was that bird, too. I was both within and without. 

In order to secure the best possible nesting site, male mountain bluebirds arrive in the early spring months a week before females to claim territory.¹ Females choose mates based not on looks or singing ability, but on who has the most adequate nesting site within a territory. For the bluebirds, it’s about a fruitful and successful future, not the superficial qualities. Although females are the ones who brood the young, the males provide most of the food to the young birds as well as the mother. In Montana, it was recorded that males would engage in fourteen feeding trips per hour.¹ 

Like the bluebirds, humans also hope for the promise of an abundant life. What we need to learn to embrace is the work it takes. To be a bird means early mornings, tedious back and forths, and barely skimming the surface of the ground in order to pull back up into the air of opportunity at the last possible second. We have all been there, with the speed of all earthly things railing down on our wings, accelerating toward the surface and doing anything within our means to stop it, if just for a moment, to find peace on a small stream of mountain air. I was on that track, headed straight into the earth. High school hit me with higher gusts of wind than young birds learn to fly in. 

 It was February 23, 2014, when I left my nest. My dad had just experienced another, more serious set of strokes, forcing us to move from my childhood home for his safety, a matter of days before we were snowed in again. Migration is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as 1) a seasonal movement of animals from one region to another, 2) movement from one part of something to another. Mountain bluebirds are the most migratory of the species, but for me, it seemed as though the joyful singing had suddenly stopped.

It took me through my high school years to begin to understand that movement or, rather, my own personal migration that had taken place in my life. It wasn’t just a movement from my sense of place, but it was from my sense of being. As an environmental science major, I’ve learned my fair share about migrations. They are long, hard, tiring, and sometimes things can go south quickly for a particular individual. However, the strength of the group continues to push forward to the goal and to the final destination; mountain bluebirds migrate in groups of twenty to  two hundred birds, so they’re never alone during trying times. When the spring season returns, there is rebirth and a fresh new land of opportunities. 

Here in Billings, as a full-time student, I don’t see my share of mountain bluebirds as often as I would like, and I never have returned to my comfortable nest where I grew up. In the mornings, though, I can still hear the birds chirping through my cracked window, as they sing their song for everyone to hear. Through everything, their song remains, and each morning has a promise to start as joyful as the last and for a future of generations of bluebirds to come. The continuation of this song is at risk though. Close to 140 million observations of mountain bluebirds have been compiled by the National Audubon Society to assess how climate change will affect the numbers and range of the Mountain Bluebird population. On the continent of North America, if the temperature were to rise 1.5 °C, there would be a 38% range loss. At a 2.0 °C increase, there is 42% range loss. Lastly, at 3.0 °C increase, we are looking at 52% of the mountain bluebird range lost. Two main contributing factors related to climate change are wildfire frequency and spring heat waves.² An increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires, which we have noticed in Montana, can lead to destruction of viable habitats for these birds. In areas where the forest does not have enough time for restoration, this can have a negative impact on mountain bluebird survival. In addition, warmer temperatures in the spring can affect fledglings and reduce survival. I may have not fully realized how much I have learned from birds until now. They are teachers of everlasting joy and of picking yourself up after nearly hitting rock bottom. They are role models exhibiting the highest diligence and character in working and choosing the best options not just for themselves, but for the future and continuation of their species. This is something we humans have had a lack of. I feel the least I can do for them is try to help keep their song alive. 

To be a bird I must be the first to wake. I must be willing to peek my head out of my nest of comfortability and into the world of opportunity. Some parts of my life may be calculated and planned, but I must be willing and understanding that it is a competitive road full of cutting edge swoops, steep turns, and spiralling dives straight to the hard earth, only to veer with all of my 

might and resume course. 

I still hang my stocking each year on the fireplace. I have looked at it each year in wonder and fascination with the life cycles of the birds I see sewn so delicately onto the red velvety fabric. How could my mother have known, even before I was born, that I was a bird? That my brother was a bird? There’s a simple answer: she is a bird, too. She has always flown forward and onward in trying times toward the promise of a better tomorrow and a song to welcome the new day ahead. To be a bird is to live a blessed life.