“Birds without Borders”
I’m confused. In a world wrangling with mRNA, spike proteins, lateral flow tests and timing for the second dose (if there will ever be one), there is a lot to be confused about. But what I really really wanna know right now is: what is that brown thing climbing up the tree outside my window?! At first glance, it looks like an insect. Like a giant cockroach inching its way up the bark. Like a water strider insect gliding effortlessly over the surface. Obsessed with finding termites, it reaches the top, flutters to the floor and starts all over again, not at all daunted by the steep climb. What bird defies gravity, scaling a tree at a 90-degree angle? I take to Google images. A Warbler? I don’t think so. Not a hint of yellow. An Ovenbird? Cute, but too tubby.
http://www.toronto-wildlife.com/Birds/Warblers/warblers.html
A Winter Wren? Gut feeling says no. Too fragile looking.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Winter_Wren/overview#
I’m about to give up. I refuse to believe this is a regular Sparrow. I scroll on. Then I see it – “Treecreeper”. What better way to describe the movement of that creature outside my window! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treecreeper
The Toronto Wildlife Centre validates my suspicions. In this tweet, it describes the “Brown Creeper” as “part of the treecreeper family, which creep up tree trunks with their bodies flat against the bark as they forage for food”. That’s gotta, be it!
https://twitter.com/twc_wildlife/status/994233150908911616
The descriptions get better: “cryptic”, “hitches upward in short, jerky motions”. We’re getting warmer.
https://ebird.org/species/brncre/CA-ON
I have found the “Brown Creeper”. It’s a smug feeling, knowing that you can point to a bird and call it by its rightful name.
http://toronto-wildlife.com/Birds/Creepers/creepers.html
New Yorkers must have felt pretty smug too when the elusive Snowy Owl showed up at their doorstep in January 2021, after a hiatus of 130 years, making international news.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/nyregion/snowy-owl-central-park.html
Our American friends were not the only ones with their eyes up to the sky. In Quebec, the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), a research granting agency, launched their program, <<Des oiseaux à la maison>> [Birds at Home], in April 2020 to inspire people during lockdown.
There is more to birds in Toronto than just pigeons, pigeon poop, sparrows, seagulls and Canadian geese. Unfortunately, if you search google images for “migratory birds Toronto”, you are also met with some disturbing images:
Let’s face it – nobody cares about a Brown Creeper. But many Brown Creepers, dozens, if not hundreds of them, dropping dead across the sidewalk, across your lawn – now that raises a red flag. I got that feeling walking along an industrial area in Etobicoke a few years ago when not one, but four migratory birds were spotted dead on the grass not far from each other. My mind did somersaults, imagining what kind of chemical runoff I must have been walking into and whether I too would be strewn across the lawn like those multi-coloured rare birds. There is a reason why they send the canary down a mineshaft.
Birds fly into windows. Birds get poisoned. These things happen. But news of this sort is not enough to galvanize people into action. So let’s frame this differently. In one year, the North American Arctic turn and cover an area of 24,000 miles (40,000 km), ie. the circumference of Earth.
https://earthsky.org/earth/which-bird-migrates-the-farthest
That is only one species of bird we are talking about here. In an age where borders are being shut down to stop the spread of a lethal virus, birds continue their flight plans unabated. Birds have no borders. And who knows what they are bringing in hand-carry.
