I said in this space yesterday that this is perhaps our most frenetic season, spring: Despite the hours of added light, time takes on a compressed quality as we struggle to constrain the chaos of the weather and of the tasks and obligations that lie ahead. We struggle, too, with finding those few moments in a day when we can abandon the strictures of schedules and planning long enough to stop, to breathe, to look at the world around us and absorb its beauty and spirit.
I also said yesterday that we would do well to heed the lessons of the birds, never busier than now, yet sure to surrender themselves periodically to the freedom of flight.
I could also have added that, in some ways, the birds are our calendar here, messenger spirits and temporal guides. At the place of the red willow, life here, in part is a matter of reckoning by the wind spirits.
Time was, we could have told you, within a week’s range of accuracy, when each migratory species or part-year resident would arrive and depart. Climate change has altered that, probably irrevocably; now, they arrive out of season year-round or simply come and decide not to leave again. We also host visitors who have never before traveled these currents, some of whom are now annual pilgrims to this place.
But the human calendar in the outside world begins with winter, and as much as it is a season of the small birds, too, winter here is the time of the raptors. Hawks, yes, but also eagles, both bald and golden. And it’s perhaps fitting to begin with Eagle anyway, since it is he — Bald Eagle particularly — who is most associated with our peoples, a pan-indigenous symbol of power and prayer. For those Native nations among us whose cosmologies give Eagle a role of spiritual power, it is often as a messenger of Spirit: We use eagle feathers in dance, in ceremony, in purification and medicine, in sending our prayers to Spirit. They keep us grounded, connected to our roots, and guide us around the braided path of the hoop.
There was a time when sightings here were commonplace, but human development has put a halt to that; now, they confine themselves largely to the mountains, to gorge and canyon, to places with ready watershed access — and ready seclusion from human interference. And so it is now something not far short of a small miracle when we see one up close. One of the surest places to find eagles, in the winter months, is in the canyon that winds along the highway south of town on the route to Santa Fe, perched in ancient cottonwoods above the Quartzite rapids of the Rio Grande.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I captured one with my own camera in the sky just across the highway about three or four weeks ago: I had my camera with me but was preoccupied, for the moment, with a more important task, when suddenly a raptor burst from the trees across the road from the southerly end of our northwest boundary, chased by a flock of ravens. I thought it was a hawk; it was sunset, and its shape appeared only briefly, and then only in silhouette. I rose, followed its progress as it headed northward to vanish low behind the dead cottonwoods and then suddenly soar into view again, and I snapped it. It was not in any way an artistic shot, ever so slightly out of focus and off-center, and I still could not tell what species of raptor it was. But when I uploaded it, its image came fully clear: white tail, brown-black body, white head.
It was a gift on a late evening when time had just crossed the threshold from winter into spring.
But the hawks, too, are birds of winter here, and of early spring (and late autumn). They live here year-round, of course, but their food sources are plentiful in the warmer months and they have no need to confine themselves to one place.
We have several who make their home here with us at various times of the year. Chief among them are a mated pair of red-tails who increasingly spend more months here than just the usual late-fall-to-early-spring cycle, along with a third clan member who puts in regular appearances. The female of the pair knows us well, our voices and our habits, and she is willing to come remarkably close; she also greets us openly occasionally, with overhead flight and tipped wings. We also have a mated pair of Swainson’s hawks, new to us last April, who have just returned in the last few days. There is a widowed Cooper’s hawk who spends time here periodically: Her mate was killed by a larger raptor, and we she came in search of him, we helped her to understand that we had taken care of his remains properly; ever since, she returns in spring and intermittently throughout the year, making sure that we know of her presence. And, of course, there are the harriers and the nighthawks and even the occasional ferruginous.
In our way, hawks are very close to eagles in power and spirit. In my own, I think of them as tangible representatives of Thunderbird; we have an old story about how Hawk played at stickball in the skies with the Thunderbirds, until he disciplined by the spirits for neglecting his duties and bound permanently to the lower atmosphere. In this place, they have become friends, as well.
But here at Red Willow, there is one sure way to know that spring has comes, irrespective of the date on the calendar: It arrives on the notes of the meadowlark’s song.
In this part of the world, Meadowlark is the sign of spring, and while they sometimes remain in residence year-round, they are most active and visible now. Of course, spring here swings wildly between summer temperatures and bitter snows, but this wingéd spirit remains unperturbed by them all.
On our land, generally speaking, we usually have a mated pair. In morning and evening, they sit across from each other, east to west: One sits on the latilla fence that marks our east boundary, while the other perches on a post or atop a tree on the west side; together, they trade songs in their customary call-and-response style. This year, at least one arrived early, but remained silent; I only knew of her presence because I happened to see her atop a small post in the waning afternoon sunlight. It would be a few days yet before she elected to share her song with our world.
The meadowlark is perfect for spring in style of dress, too, all soft earthy neutrals topped by a scarf of brilliant sunny yellow. But she is far from the only golden bird of this space and season.
This is the third year in a row that we have seen the return of the chokecherry birds. The rest of the world calls them grosbeaks, but here they are known for the fondness for the indigenous fruit of the chokecherry tree. The female, shown above, is much more muted in color than her mate, but both wear golden yellow on their robes (although their cousins, the evening version, wear black and bright orange). They are clannish, social birds, small but sturdy and fond of seed and animated conversation. We have had groups of thirty or more here at any one time, and they are skittish but increasingly accustomed to our presence.
And then there are those who arrived only days ago, the tiny delicate wings of the sun itself: the goldfinches.
Save hummingbirds (who have also come back in the last three or four days, far earlier than usual), the goldfinches tend to be the most diminutive of the birds who frequent this place. They seem especially fragile, but their spirits are assertive and their spiritual powers strong. For some peoples, goldfinches are significant to ceremonial ways, whether in practical terms, by way of their feathers, or for what they symbolize.
The same is true of another small spirit whose color is descriptive: Bluebird.
Both the Western bluebird and the mountain bluebird make their homes here. The male Western, shown perched quizzically in the image above, is brilliant indigo and white with a rusty-colored cape and ruff; his mate wears more muted dress, in paler but similar shades. Their blue color resembles that of the buntings, who are known to inhabit the area but who rarely show themselves. The mountain bluebirds are more sociable, and more classically blue, feathers falling somewhere between indigo and royal. Like the goldfinches, they are significant to the spiritual practices of some traditions.
And then there are the jays.
Much of this land mass thinks of the blue jay as a small, cardinal-sized bird with a similarly crested head and barred and banded feathers in navy, cornflower blue, and white. Those jays don’t live here.
In this place, the jay is a large bird, nearly a foot in length. We have multiple species in this area, but the two most common are the Western scrub jay and the piñon jay (most often misspelled as “pinyon”), both with rounded heads and no crest. The two are frequently confused by amateur birdwatchers, who tend to think the scrub jay is the piñon jay, but they are actually recognizeably different, just as their smaller bluebird cousins are. The piñon jay, like the mountain bluebird, is virtually all blue, ranging from a warm indigo on the back and tailfeathers to a soft pale blue with a hint of gray to it on chin and chest. The scrub jay, which appears at the feeder in the image immediately above, on the other hand, has an indigo head and back with a gray underside and little hints of rusty color on the upper wing feathers. Their feathers are valued for various purposes; they resemble the deep blue macaw feathers used in some fetishes and carvings and traditional headdresses.
Both the bluebirds and the jays used to residents for only a very particular period of time, at least on our land. The bluebirds arrived in the last half of August and were gone by the third week of September; the jays were birds of autumn and early winter. Now, the jays are increasingly scarce in any season, but the bluebirds, like the robins, have moved in more or less permanently, perhaps as a result of the climate’s steady winter warming trend here.
In form and shape, the jays have always reminded me of another bird indigenous to this area (and, indeed, to most of Turtle Island), one with plenty of cousins to share the land. it’s a woodpecker, but not the sort that probably leaps first to mind, with a red head (crested or not) and a laddered or dotted black and white back. It’s the Northern flicker.
The Northern flicker comes in two variants: red-shafted (which might more properly be called “orange-shafted,” but “red-” has stuck), and yellow-shafted. The former are found especially in this part of the country and, perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, in the Midwest; the latter are more populous in the North and East.
The flicker is sacred to our peoples; I’m not even going to bother qualifying that statement, because with the rise and spread of the Tipi Way (also known as the Native American Church, or the Peyote Way), its accoutrements and objects have become a pan-Native phenomenon.
Flicker feathers are especially popular for peyote fans (and other fans, too), transforming a work of art into a sacred object. As a result, these birds are treated with honor and respect. They, too, were formerly residents of late summer and early fall, showing themselves only for a period of three or four weeks. Now, we have a couple of mated pairs that live with us year-round, making their permanent home here and raising their families year after year.
And when I say “making their home here,” I mean that very literally: A young mated pair has just moved into the upper story of our house, still under construction and not yet plastered on the exterior. They will allowed to stay; plastering will not commence before their young are hatched and fledged and the next abandoned, at which point it can be filled in and covered over before the adobe is applied. We had always intended to paint our window and door sills turquoise, for good luck and the blessings of the spirits; we never dreamed that the spirit birds themselves would bless our home by taking up residence in it.
There are so many others that are part and parcel of this place, many of them are year-round residents, others less so: the sparrows and finches and juncos, the orioles and tanagers, the Brewer’s blackbirds and the red-wings, the magpies and ravens. But there is another bird, one of the raptors, who used to be only an occasional visitor in early autumn who now makes its home here more or less permanently.
They call it the American Kestrel. In my people’s way, its name is more or less synonymous with “marsh hawk.”
A member of the falcon family, it is the smallest of the raptors, but it is fierce. In that regard, it is the perfect for this land of harsh and extreme power and beauty, agile and fast. It also was once a September-only visitor, and for only the briefest of days. Now, we have at least two mated pairs who make their permanent home here. They are still stealthy spirits, when the want to be; they seem to disappear for days or weeks on end, although in actuality it’s merely that they are choosing not to show themselves to us. But they always return, making themselves visible, and they now appear daily for weeks or months at a time.
This, unusually for this series, is one of my own photos. I took it nearly two years ago, when this spirit bird had returned out of season, bringing his clan and making clear his intention to stay. He holds deeply personal power and significance for me, and that year, he made himself known to me at the times when I most needed connection to my people and past. This photo was taken on one such day, when he came close to the pond, then settled on the hitching post in the round pen, and the shot was a very obviously deliberate gift on his part.
Speaking of the pond, the water came yesterday, and by this morning was overflowing its banks. A small flock of Canadian snow geese came out of the peaks to the east and circled around overhead, a reconnaissance mission for available watersheds in what has been an unusually dry season. We may see them in the water over the days to come. The ducks may come, too, as they did routinely last year, along with an immature blue heron and the occasional killdeer and a small group of glossy ibises, far off their usual migratory path but now regular late-summer visitors the last two years.
The birds are drawn to the water, even those that are not water birds themselves, and they draw us to it, too. But for earthbound creatures, we humans are strikingly ungrounded too much of the time, and these spirits of the air help remedy that, too. They are spirits of ceremony, of medicine, of prayer.
But above all, they are spirits of the winds.
There are times when we need to stay grounded, to feel our roots in the earth, to recall, at the level of soul and ancestral memory, the place of our emergence. Oh, we, too, can climb a tree, or a mountain; we can stand above the earth’s surface and see our world from a view closer to that of a bird’s eye, broadening our perspective on it and better understanding our place in it. To fly unaided has not been granted to us, except in the world of dreams. And yet . . . .
The eagle can sit along the river for hours, patient, watchful, comfortable in its perch. When still, it seems as rooted to the earth as the old cottonwood itself, despite the fact that its talons rest yards above it. We could learn from that sort of patience, stillness, contentment with what is and where we are.
But sooner or later, the eagle will require the freedom that comes with movement through the higher realms, those closer to the world of the spirits. He will leap, although the action itself may be virtually imperceptible, onto the currents, gliding seamlessly through the air. He will make himself free once again.
We need to learn both lessons. Because in this place, in the old way, one way of understanding the path we travel and the time we are afforded is through a reckoning by the wind spirits.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
