Birdtober Day Five: Mocking

Today's Birdtober calendars call for mockingbirds - either the Northern Mockingbird, seen all over the United States and Southern Canada, or any one of the approximately seventeen other mockingbird species in the world. I have four mockingbirds on my Life List, but today I decided instead to go with my colleague's Uganda Birdtober list. She put the Eastern Plantain Eater down for today, and I immediately knew why. Mockingbirds get their name from their ability to imitate other birds and even non-bird sounds. Eastern Plantain Eaters don't do that. But while not a mockingbird, this species sounds like someone laughing hysterically, poking fun at the world. (You can hear the call in the YouTube video below, although the one in the video sounds very staid; usually there are groups of them and they sound a lot more mocking than this one!)

 

I guess today's poem is cheating just a bit, since I didn't write it specifically for this post. Instead, I wrote it back in March after attending a Good Friday service. The bird in the poem is definitely mocking, even though I didn't use that word.

 

 

Before the Cock Crows


In the outdoor
Good Friday service
in Kampala
someone read about
Peter denying Jesus
before the cock crowed
three times,
and at that moment
an Eastern Plantain-Eater
called.

It wasn’t a rooster
but with its
slightly menacing laughter
it worked just as well.
Did I deny Jesus too,
I wondered
and the bird kept chortling
as though it knew
all the ways
I could have.
 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day Four: Kingfisher

Welcome to the first week of Birdtober! So far this week we've had:

Day One: Plush-crested Jay

Day Two: American Robin

Day Three: Mountain Bluebird

 

Today's bird is a Kingfisher. The US calendar calls for a Belted Kingfisher and the Ugandan one for a Pied Kingfisher. In 2023 I posted about how rich I felt because I had seen eight different kingfisher species. Then, just a few days ago, I saw a ninth: the Giant Kingfisher. So that's what I'm writing about today.

 

 

 Photo Source: eBird.com

Giant Kingfisher

More than sixteen inches long,
Cackling, squeaky, squawky song.
They catch fish, then beat it senseless —
Never could be called defenseless.
No sooner fledged than they start diving,
Swooping, hunting, just plain thriving.

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Tabatha has today's roundup.

SJT October and Birdtober Day Three: Change and Bluebirds

Our Spiritual Journey Thursday theme this month is Change and Transformation. Visit our host, Leigh Anne, here to see what everyone else is writing on this topic.

These last few years have been times of huge change for my husband and me. This time three years ago, we were still living in Haiti, and since then we have lived on two different continents (three, if you count the weeks spent in the United States in between). I'm teaching a different subject now, and we're living seven thousand miles away from our kids, and I walk as often as possible in wetlands, getting my boots muddy and making a checklist of the birds I see. 

Change is often frightening, especially when it comes unexpectedly. But it can also be life-giving. Wetlands are a symbol of change. Every time I go to Lake Victoria, the beach looks a little different. Sometimes the water is high, sometimes low. Sometimes it's rough, and other times completely smooth. There are different combinations of birds each time. The plant life is different. Sometimes there's a whole new "island" out in the water; it blew in from across the lake and will be around for a while. Wetlands are in between water and dry land. People speak of draining the swamp but that, of course, is the last thing you want to do, as the swamp protects against storms and flooding, filters water, and is downright beautiful. The swamp is always in flux.

Back in 2019, I wrote this post about change. I referred to the hymn "Abide with Me," and particularly the words "Change and decay in all around I see; oh thou who changest not, abide with me." As things change around me, in my work life, my family, and the world, I can trust God's unchanging love that will keep on holding onto me. I hope others can take comfort in this, and I'm thinking particularly of people cleaning up from Hurricane Helene, people struggling with war, and others dealing with huge change, well beyond their ability to control it.

The bird prompts for today are Bluebird, Eastern Bluebird, and Ross's Turaco (which is a very blue bird, and which I wrote about and shared pictures of here). (See the calendars below; one is a US-based calendar, one is more international, and one was made by a colleague and is fully Ugandan.) I decided to choose the international calendar for today, but I've written about the Mountain Bluebird, which is found in the United States.

 

Photo Source: eBird.com

Mountain Bluebird


I held your hand
while you told me something about you
I didn’t know before.
We laughed and cried and adjusted.
And the Mountain Bluebirds flitted around the whole time,
being so purely blue,
and filling me with hope
that we could weather the changes coming,
just as these pieces of sky catch bugs
and migrate and
make the best of it all.

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

Birdtober Day Two: American Robin

Photo Source: eBird.com

I knew that American Robins got their name from European settlers who thought they looked like the European Robins they were used to back home. Even though the ones back home were far smaller, weighing about a quarter as much. But I didn't know all the details in this great essay by Robert Francis called "How Robins Got Their Name." Specifically, I didn't know that the settlers gave the name Robin to any bird they saw with red on it. "At one time," writes Francis, "Eastern Bluebirds, which have a band of orange on their chests, were also referred to as Robins. Eastern Towhees were called Ground Robins, while Baltimore Orioles were Golden Robins." He goes on to report that there are over a hundred birds in the world now with robin in their name, and most of them have no relationship genetically to the European Robin or the American Robin, but were just given the name because they made Europeans think nostalgically of the Robins back home. Francis makes the deeper point that the newcomers didn't bother asking the people already in America what they called the birds. In fact, go read the whole essay - it's really good.

American Robin

Settlers called the American Robin a Robin
because it had red on it
just like the Robins back home.
In the same way,
I reacted to the African Thrush
and the Rufous-bellied Thrush
 by saying,
“It’s basically a Robin.”

You feel more at ease
when you can recognize something.
You may be in a new continent,
but look around,
see what’s familiar.
No need to ask questions.
You already know what that is.

It’s a tree.
It’s a flower.
It’s a birdy. 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey