Sometimes a cacophony can be a good thing

By Carl Heintze

Every morning these summer days when I awake, it is to a cacophony of birds.

I like that word. The dictionary tells me a "cacophony" is a "harsh jumble of discordant sounds hard to understand."

And that's what it is, a veritable jumble of sound. A woodpecker is banging his head against the wooden power pole outside the bedroom window. The doves are cooing at one another. The chats are imitating birds they think they've heard--although they don't sound like any birds I ever heard, except chats.

In between are warbles, whistles and what have you, the songs of birds I can't identify.

I like to think the birds are telling me it's time to get up, but I know that's not so. Birds sing not to amuse, edify, entertain or charm humans, but for territoriality. They are making noises so others know they have a nest somewhere nearby and they should keep their distance.

Now and then some of them will go bonkers. They whistle, shriek, screech or otherwise carry on. Then I know they are not singing, they are sounding the alarm because a cat, a squirrel or a human being has come too close to the nest. Their concern is all too real. Every now and then a cat manages to get one.

Usually it's the doves' nests that get raided because doves tend to build their nests in all the wrong places: branches of trees, gables of roofs, any flat surface. We once had doves nest on top of my wife's garden gloves. She had to buy a new pair and wait while the pair hatched a couple of chicks and raised them until they could fly on their own. So spring and early summer is noisy in our neighborhood, especially early in the morning, because it's also nesting season. I never thought much about this until I retired and didn't have to get up and rush out of the house to work. Because it takes a certain amount of morning calm to hear the bird morning cacophony.

These days, however, I don't have to get up early. I get to lie in bed and listen and contemplate how many neighborhood birds there are. Indeed, I am able to contemplate birds in general.

We in the urban world, tend to forget birds. They're there, but they are unobtrusive. Most of any day they are quiet. During the late fall and early winter, a lot of them move on to warmer climates.

They come back in the early spring from wherever they've been. Even if they have been around all year like the chats, or, as some call them, mockingbirds, they're not noisy until nesting time.

Then they break into full song. They need to advise their mates where they are. They need to tell rivals to stay out of their territory. They need to find food for their young once they are hatched.

So nesting season is busy and noisy.

Even so, we tend to ignore birds in suburbia. We tend to think they're present in pasture, woodland and roadside in the country, but not in the city.

It's only when we start looking for them that they become evident. In the long run of things we tend to concentrate on mammals: squirrels, rats and mice, in particular, because all of them are suburban dwellers, scrounging for food among our scraps.

Still it is possible to see and appreciate birds. One way, of course, is to do what I've been doing these bright spring mornings: lie in bed and listen. You'll hear a lot of birds even if you don't see them. Seeing birds--simply for the joy of seeing them--is a little more difficult.

It means you have not only to wake up early, you also have to get up early. Then armed with some patience, a pair of binoculars perhaps and a cup of coffee, you can sit out on your back porch and watch.

Spend a half hour sitting quietly and you'll be surprised at how many birds there are in your neighborhood. You'll also be surprised at how little attention they pay to you so long as you stay quiet. In time, with even more patience, you may be able to get them to come closer for a better look.

You don't have to feed them, although this certainly helps to attract birds, especially aggressive birds like English sparrows. You also can put up bird boxes, although this takes even more patience. Birds check out boxes for a season sometimes before they finally decide this man-made gift is a safe thing to do. Doves don't though. They keep on building their precarious nests in precarious places. Maybe that's why they nest most of the year. If at first you don't succeed ... and so on.

At the least lie in bed on a weekend these days and listen. It's worth the wait.

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Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. A collection of his essays may be found at http://www.doitright.com/Carl/essays. He can be reached by email at feodorh@juno.com.

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