#along my CBC birding routes as well

[scheherazades-vigil]

When I was younger, the Band-taileds would descend en masse to the feeders, still tentative but ultimately brave with need (not very brave at all). There would be lookouts, naturally, but they gave only false positives and failed at spotting true threats. Never forget the Pigeon Head Bob, though. It's adorable, if necessary.

When I say en masse, well, in the day it was dozens per large feeder. We'd spot flocks 100+ strong, easily. In multiples. They'd amass on the ground, like giant, clueless Towhees. We'd scatter extra for those stragglers; those that fit nowhere, plus the ground birds. SOSP, SPTO, DEJU, etc. Yeah sorry I'm lazy RN and it doesn't actually matter. They were birbs. Birbs of shrub and soil.

That was decades ago. By the time the neighbor's cats had taken their bridge toll, the snakes and frogs (the bigguns and small) were gone. The Trillium and gentler flowers, forgotten. The Grand Fir were dying off. Even the gentle willow. The various berries. The Cowbirds were outpopulating their warbler hosts. The Barred Owls had driven the small owls out. Even the Great-horneds left.

Rare the bear and bobcat, common the coyotes. Gone apladontia, gone shrew and jumping mouse and garter snake and red-legged frog, gone salamanders of any kind, and the Band-taileds dropped down, to the single digits, until they stopped coming at all.

For those of you who doubt the effects humans may wield against their own habitats, against ecosystems too beautiful and frail to comprehend: I have seen it firsthand spanning aforementioned decades. It's a horror to behold. Where now the horse and the rider, the Pileated Woodpecker; that's how it goes, right?

Clear-cutting/deforestation, even around acres of contiguous woodland (ours) could not help but kill it all. Someone paving over the fucking marsh and driving out the rails and blackbirds certainly didn't help. Who even knows who did it, and does it matter in the scale of such widespread brutality? Yes and no.

The cats died to owls and coyotes, but real talk, they were so murderous and common in our world, the toll so high... We never did anything, but fuck, we should've called animal control. I didn't know my options at the time. I was a kid. They lived in squalor and danger besides. Bad for everyone.

We were afraid of retribution. It'd obviously be us, the reporting. No dozen neighbors of possibility. They seemed the type to hold grudges, and we had too many animals to risk, then. Past unpleasantness... was suspected.

Also the wind blocks were gone and trees fell dangerously. Please, don't purchase forested land in rural settings only to clear-cut it. I beg you. The cost is so high, even to your neighbors' safety.

I apologize for the unintended post hijacking. I just feel this need be said.

I pray for the Pigeons. Rock even, in the cities. But especially my Shy Bois.

Fighting for the beat, pigeons roil among themselves and their vibrations seeking scraps of grain, spoiled fries minimally covered in mayonnaise, and breadcrumbs laid by the caring passersby. A cooing male is in heat and recommends his beatnick beatitude to the dying heat as the pigeons ponder his poverty among the dying heaps of grain sent out by unworried onlookers.