Across The Savannah

I was on my way to buy sunflower seeds for my bird feeders, which the squirrels, especially, appreciate. Along the way, I passed a vagabond perched holding a sign, "Will work for food." I see guys like him a lot. Usually, they come in pairs and work both sides of an intersection. I hear it's a scam.

I drove on with no guilt about feeding birds, not humans. I suspect the drifter had birds in mind too— Old Crow and maybe dreams of Wild Turkey flitting through his scalawag head, if he "worked for food" long enough.

At Lowes, I was checking out 20- pound sacks of sunflower seeds when a businessman walked up. "We're feeding birds when a lot of folks are out of work," I said. He laughed and said, "Times are tough all right unless you're a bird"

A female hummingbird coming in for a rendezvous with sugar water. —Photo by T. Poland

That's for sure. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that 53.4 million Americans drop nearly $5 billion a year to see nature in action. That ain't chicken feed, folks.

My backyard hosts two birdbaths, three feeders, a hummingbird feeder, and a fountain. Running water sounds like a dinner bell to birds and when the fountain spills rivulets, a feathery ensemble descends on my yard. Cardinals, finches, orioles, woodpeckers, brown thrashers, and other birds arrive in such plentitude my backyard looks like a wildlife refuge.

I work at home and keeping the bird feeders full brings entertainment and sometimes a lesson about life. Besides, birds and I go way back. We share a professional connection that goes back nearly 30 years. Today, watching birds provides a break from writing, but in the past birds were work. As a cinematographer in the '80s, a series of films regularly took me to Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge off the coast near Charleston.

Long days ... I'd board a U.S. Department of Interior Boston Whaler at McClellanville well before dawn and spend the morning filming shorebird rookeries on small, flat, lowslung islands. Rookery islands are flat, sandy places. Little vegetation grows there. A mere scrape in the sand suffices for a nest and since the speckled eggs of many species look just like sand, I had to step carefully.

Rookery islands are wild and pristine with no trappings from civilization. They truly are for the birds, beautiful, sun splashed, wild, and desolate. And desolation is where the business of raising fledglings best takes place. The Department of Interior owns this territory; it'll never become another Hilton Head. You'll never see pot-bellied men in golf carts riding along where baby pelicans grew up. It'll remain barren yet full of life: a ravishing contradiction.

Back in the '80s, I took that natural splendor for granted. It was a job. Work. Now, reminiscing with the benefit of a bit more maturity, I realize I was in a place magical and majestic— bird land—a bird watcher's paradise. Islands with names like Cape and Bulls sit off the Lowcountry just beyond where the edge of North America slips beneath the Atlantic. Farther out beyond the islands, the warm Gulf Stream courses through the sea. Life's basic elements abound here.

The ancients believed the world consisted of air, fire, water, and earth. Perhaps they had their own feathery islands in mind. On islands such as Cape Romain's, the sun bears down incubating eggs destined to fill the air in another life dominated by water. And those scrapes my feet avoided? They consisted of the remnants of ancient mountains, long washed into the Atlantic and heaped up into isles. There I was walking across aged peaks barely above sea level, shooting scenes for TV and film, a strange scenario, given thought.

It seems like only yesterday that I trained my Arriflex on pelicans crashing into the sea capturing menhaden. There on those sun-bleached islands, I shot footage of baby pelicans, brownish-purple blobs with bobbing heads. At day's end, the sun sinking over the continent, the U.S. Department of Interior guide ferried me back to the mainland. Hot, hungry, and tired, I made the two-hour drive to the office and sent film off for processing.

Looking back, crowning moments stand out from my bird-filming years: my first bald eagle wheeling overhead, its regal head flashing in the sun. Spotting the rare swallowtailed kite (the camera was cased, useless when I needed it most). Glancing from my car window to see a painted bunting clinging to a slender sea oats stalk. Two chilly weeks in March hiding in a blind each day before dawn, my camera trained on a tree cavity waiting and waiting and finally the moment! Fluffy, yellow baby wood ducks leap from the tree hollow, bouncing off the forest floor like tennis balls, then forming a velvety, golden train to follow mom to a beaver pond. Their inaugural swim waited. Seeing an osprey plunge into the estuary, emerging with a silvery fish in its talons.

That was then. Backyard bird life is tamer by far. One moment, so far, stands out. Amidst a flurry of feeding, a bird crashed into my sliding glass door with a sickening thud one morning. Opening the door to my deck, I saw a female house finch on her back, feathers ruffled on her right wing. Spasms racked her little body. I was sure she was dying.

I reached down to pick her up, and the sight of me was enough to get her to fly. Somehow she flew to a nearby pine, latched onto a small limb, and hung upside down by one foot. Her redheaded mate flew to her side at once, chirping in a way that sounded like pleading. "C'mon, shake it off. You can make it. Don't die. Don't leave me."

The male kept nudging her with his beak and pacing the limb she clung to. I expected her to drop in a freefall of death. After what seemed an eternity, she struggled and managed to stand upright on the limb, wobbly at best. Her mate nudged her more, chirped louder, and after about 10 minutes, the pair flew away. That afternoon I spotted her, wing feathers still askew, at a feeder, her mate right by her. All seemed right in her world again.

"For the birds" generally carries a touch of sarcasm implying something's no good. "This economy is for the birds." Well, that's true, but there's nothing worthless about feeding birds, even when times are tough. The best thing about my backyard bird watching is that it's not work. I don't have to cart heavy equipment around, keep batteries charged, avoid camera tilt, or unload film magazines. I don't make any money doing it; in fact, it's just the opposite, but it's time well spent. And sometimes quite revealing.

Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol@ earthlink.net