There is this very particular feeling I get on fall days, when the cold wind is ripping the clouds apart after rain but the sun is still warm, like I too should spread my wings and swoop up into the sky and away.
Ancestral migratory restlessness, perhaps. So many cultures were nomadic for millions of years, after all.
The oaks are full of Red-Shafted Flickers, suddenly. They were quiet all summer; now they’re moving, calling, banging on the big tree near my house. I don’t know if these are the same flickers we saw in August, or neighbors from up north, moving south for the winter — while the locals move farther south still.
Yellow-rumped Warblers are flowing quietly south, too. Sitting in my garden after poking at the soil all morning, I started to notice soft chip-calls, and little flickers of motion. The oaks were alive with hundreds of tiny bodies, fluttering, almost silent; I had not noticed.
Some of those warblers spend the winter in the Gorge. Others head for the southern continent, as far north as California and all the way up the east coast. Some go all the way down past Panama to fatten up in the southern hemisphere.
Sometimes I see another warbler, Nashville or Orange-crowned, but mostly it’s been quiet. Unnervingly so. When I was a child, not so long ago, fall brought memorable clouds of birds in all shapes and colors. These days, the silent forest reflects what scientists have been warning us about for a decade: this continent has lost almost 4 billion birds since 1970, crashing alongside insect population. Too much food, forest, stream, and meadow has vanished.
One person can only do a little, especially while struggling through the thousands of tiny pains modern life puts us through: prices, work schedules, groceries, a world built for the convenience of totally normal people, which so few of us can be anymore.
I just hope I can inspire enough people to each do a little, that we make a massive difference. Just think: if every building in a city planted one tree, the birds would have a forest again...
In the meantime, fall migration is here, and it is still marvelous — especially early in the morning, when the sun is warm and the shadows cold, and the oaks are fulling of warblers and the singing wind.
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