If you, like me, live in Northwest DC, a few days ago you would not think that an international pandemic is, in fact, happening. People were out jogging, loitering in the street, generally laughing it up. While some of this still continues, many people, with the exception of those with dogs to walk or children to entertain, have opted to stay inside. This is a sign that things have indeed gotten worse. The whir of springtime weed whackers and the shouts of toiling landscape workers have quieted. The gutting of the house around the corner has come to a halt. The impassioned footsteps of the ever-present DC fitness nuts have stopped drumming, their breaths, no longer panting. People who are outside feel bad about it and talk quietly among themselves like children up to no good.
What you can hear, in glorious abundance are the birds.
The birds have no idea an international pandemic is causing turmoil in the human world. Probably because this time (unlike with the Bird Flu) they are innocent bystanders to this pageant of misery. The birds are probably very happy that there are fewer people out, especially the ones with weed whackers. Trees have begun producing buds and pods full of pollen, favorite staples of the bird diet. They can finally hear themselves think, not having to contend with the constant jackhammering of the house-gutters so close to a patch of woodland on Adams Mill Road they particularly enjoy. Better yet, the feeders have still been replenished, all the better to eat at without the pesky interruption of those inconsiderate humans. It must be a pretty good time to be a neighborhood bird right now.
For the first time, I saw a Hairy Woodpecker on our block; this is a bird that does not commonly venture up from nearby Rock Creek Park, for it is among the more shy of the woodpeckers, unlike its smaller relative the Downy Woodpecker or its distant cousin the Red Bellied Woodpecker, both of which will come to feeders and are generally present in city blocks with enough tree cover. The Golden-Crowned Kinglets are out now, and they appear tiny next to the Northern Cardinals which have just begun to sing, whoops and whistles that carry across our community of apartment blocks near the National Zoo. The White-Throated Sparrow has also begun to sing, its song plaintive, tonal, wistful even, like the bird equivalent of the airy vocal tracks on a Billie Eilish song. Even our humble friend, the American Robin, Turdus migratorius, has become emboldened in the last few days, singing, flocking, and eating worms from the undisturbed earth. The Carolina Wren whittles its triplet tune before hopping along the sidewalk in a rare moment of undisturbed bliss. Northern Mockingbirds are beginning their seasonal acoustic piracy, picking up the songs of their fellow avians and broadcasting them throughout the neighborhood in a bizarre bird mixtape. I say hello to all of them, and they continue about their business, which like all bird business, is very intense and conducted with all the vibrating energy their little beings can contain.
I turn off the white noise machine (necessary because the dog will bark at anything he hears) in order to hear the birds sing and chatter. Despite the seriousness of the situation we are in, I cannot help forgetting everything happening around me, instead singularly focusing on hearing the birds go about their lives, trying to pick out a specific tune or two among their chatter. It is easy to forget that outside of our human dramas, another world exists that both depends on the outcome of those dramas but is regardless ultimately unfolding day by day outside of most of them. The birds don't know about the coronavirus, but they have illnesses of their own. They aren't washing their hands every few hours, but they do spend hours a day preening their feathers, ensuring they aren't colonized by harmful bacteria. The birds don't understand social distancing, congregating in little huddles beneath a neighborhood suet feeder. They get to see their friends and their enemies, the petty conflicts of their little quarter-mile territories unfolds normally in the background of ours, but the stillness of our isolation has elevated them to the foreground of our consciousness.
Sitting here, writing this at 6:16 PM EDT, I hear ten different birds. I have been writing different things all day, stopping only to take the dog for a walk and pause, inevitably, to observe the birds. It is spring, the sun is shining. The air is cool and crisp. The news is horrifying, the pandemic is getting worse, governments are taking drastic measures, elections are crumbling, but outside, right now, the birds are singing. Dozens of them, all different songs, mellifluous and elegant, croaking and cawing, cooing and warbling, they are singing.
"The birds are On One today," I tell my husband. He nods absently. He is refreshing the news.
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