The Last Word On Nothing

To be fair, the blue jay did warn me.

I was walking across a green space near my apartment building, bounded by streets and a transit station and criss-crossed by concrete paths and surrounded by roads. A recent mow–the first in months–had left it looking like a hay field. A hay field with a lot of litter.

Ahead of me I saw two fluffy gray lumps, with specks of blue on their wings and grumpy faces. I did what any responsible Instagram user of the 21st century would do; I took out my phone to take a picture of the two baby blue jays, just old enough to be out of the nest but not quite old enough to take care of themselves.

I heard a swoop, whistling wings right over my head. That was the warning. I looked up and saw the grown-up blue jay, hopping from branch to branch above me. It was making a gentle “peep” sound, not the aggressive squawk I expect from a jay. But it was clearly agitated, so I took the hint, walked away, then stopped again, farther from the birds.

I pointed my phone, hit the button to take a picture, then started to frame a second, better picture. Then it hit me.

No, really, a bird hit me. That grown-up blue jay smacked me in the back of the head. I jumped and laughed at myself. “Okay, okay!” I told the bird, and moved on. I didn’t want it to come back–a swipe at the front side of my head could have been messier.

The pandemic is a time of death, so much death. But my own pandemic experience has involved a lot of observing the area immediately around my apartment building and, one day a week, my parents’ place, in the suburbs.

Almost everything I normally do, from commuting to concerts, is gone, and I have nothing to do but look at the baby blue jays. Or the starlings that are working on their second brood of the year, atop a nearby garage door. The flowers that grow on the fences around the parking lot. The baby raccoons sleeping in a tree behind my parents’ house.

An hour and a half later, walking back from a distanced visit in a friend’s backyard, I saw the two babies again, but this time I recognized that “get the heck away from my babies” peep and stood at a respectful distance. Two days later, I saw them again; one had figured out flying enough to get into the bottom branch of a tree, although it didn’t seem sure of its balance yet, flapping and wiggling to hold its spot.

I feel you, little bird. I don’t have my balance right now, either.

Photo: Helen Fields. Sorry it’s not very good; the blue jay wouldn’t let me take another one.