STANDING IN our backyard lately has been a little like standing on the runways at JFK Airport. The aviators come soaring in for a landing, sometimes so uncomfortably close to our heads, we can feel the whoosh of their wings and the hum of their engines.
Had not a catbird expertly tipped his wings at just the right moment recently, I would have had grounds for a very serious legal claim against him. A wren just the other day zoomed past, almost shaving hairs from my head, as if he was a Blue Angel in a summer airshow. It’s not beneath these aviators to show off occasionally for the sheer pleasure of it. If you could fly, wouldn’t you sometimes show off to those who couldn’t? They may also be trying to say, “Get the heck off the runway, you idiot!”
It’s one shift after another with minimal down time, all day long. It’s like working for a corporate airliner with no union. We have stickers on our windows to prevent crashes because there’s no ground crew with lighted batons to wave them away. They stop only to refuel and clean, splashing around in the little baths we’ve provided like busy airmen in a naval shower room. There’s no time to towel off. They expertly flex the wings so that excess moisture doesn’t create drag on subsequent flights and then quickly service with a few skillful tweaks any feathers out of alignment.
For a quick fuel stop, they peck, pry, poke, pull and pick up various delicacies from the ground, all with the same ingenious tool. It’s fast food to them. There isn’t time to be choosy before air traffic control issues another command. Then their off, some just for quick, local flights, others for the long haul and distant landing grounds — and a few for stealth missions in enemy territories.
Most people see the skies and trees filled with feathered airbuses and puddle jumpers and think nothing of it. They don’t appreciate the effort involved. Two mourning doves were mostly grounded for a couple of weeks this spring in a tree on our patio. They would take turns sitting silently in the nest. We could always see a single unblinking eye deep within the foliage. It’s only when you see a bird doing nothing for hours that you truly realize just how busy they usually are.
We saw two parent cardinals last week teaching a novice fighter pilot how to lift himself off the ground. The young airman’s wings were almost twice the size of bis body. “This is much harder than it looks!” He would cry out to his parents as he tried to flap. “I’ll never be able to do this!” He complained and complained, but his parents, hardened pilots that they were, knew it was only a matter of hours before they would have trouble finding him at all.
The shadows deepen and the fireflies (not serious aviators, as charming as they are) ascend from the depths of the greenery. The busy pilots, their shifts nearly completed for the day, search for Residence Inns and Best Westerns in the bushes and the invisible heights of trees. Just any reasonably-priced place to settle for the night, when all but a few flights are grounded, will do.
They call home one last time, with barely enough energy to speak. “Good Ni–,” they call out. “Goo–,” “Goo–.”
Then silence.
They sleep the sleep of the non-existent.
Their motors are switched off and their wings are folded. In their dreams, they see the open skies and feel the lush currents of air. Their work ethic is such that even at night, they probably long to fulfill their duties and exhaust themselves all over again. The privilege of flight is the glorious narrative of their days. Only they were given this privilege. Only they can rise above the earth without falling.
