On your spark bird

and all the good things that get you through the day

For me, that week watching these vultures, being in their world just gripped me. It changed my life. — Noah Stryker

“What time is it?” I say to my spouse Janyce standing in the doorway.

“It’s seven,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get you up.”

“Okay, I’m up. But I’m going to stay right here like this until the coffee is ready.”

I turn my head back to the doorway again but Janyce is gone and it’s just me in the middle of the bed with my arms and legs outstretched like a starfish looking up at the ceiling fan. Four paddles turning around and around and around. It’s quieter in the morning at the Cape and this new mattress is so soft and hot that last night I threw open both windows and turned the ceiling fan on.

I was up, of course, after I did that, roaming around the house in bare feet on the cold wood floor, first for water, then to find my computer. I was up for hours and the history of my anxiety attack is still here on my computer screen in all the tabs I left open.

Study suggests past COVID infection may not fend off omicron

Michigan school shooting: Suspect's parents arrested in Detroit

Salem family hit hard by COVID-19 after dad, daughter, 12, intubated

Roe v. Wade's future is in doubt after historic arguments at Supreme Court

Belgian zoo says its 2 very runny-nosed hippos have COVID-19

When the Hippos got Covid was when I finally closed the laptop shut and went back to bed. These headlines are not new. At any time of the year, from as far back as I can remember, I could find bad news and lots of it. I remember bemoaning the BBC News on the radio when I was in college. I was outraged that they couldn’t think of one good thing in the world to report on. Ever. And at age 20, I refused to turn it on.

One of my girls from the Tinywins text chat sent me a podcast the other night. “You know, for when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night,” she said. The text read: “Here’s tonight’s podcast for you, I have to finish but I loved the first story.”

I loved it, too. Lying in the dark, one weeknight this past week, fully awake, I finally stopped staring at the ceiling and got up to find my phone. My girlfriend had been up in the night, too. I could tell from her business Instagram page that was newly updated with a whole slew of new content. I read her text, then promptly listened to Ira Glass and Noah Stryker talk about Turkey Vultures. Just trust me, it’s a good one.

“Birders, when we get together and go out on field trips, yes, we love to say, oh yeah, what was your spark bird? Oh, that's a cool one. What was your spark bird? And you ask just about any birder out there what their spark bird is, and they'll probably have an answer for you. For me, that week watching these vultures, being in their world just gripped me. It changed my life.” — Noah Stryker

I’ve been thinking about my spark bird all week. I think maybe it was the bluebirds who started hanging around the feeder a few winters ago. There are six of them: three brilliant blue ones, the males— and three duller ones, with a few striking blue feathers on their tails, the females. They always come in a flock of six and for several years I would see them only in December, only in the snow, pecking away at the suet cake. They would stay a couple of days and then they’d be gone. The male bluebirds are a fluorescent shade of blue, with big round cartoonish heads, and round open eyes, bigger than the other dainty winter birds that flit to and fro, from the woods to the feeder and back again.

We’ve pretty much spent the past few years since their first arrival making a habitat that they would love. We put up a bluebird house. Last year, they checked it out, but let the wrens have the first move in to build a stick nest. I started to buy the premium soft food that they love. I even hung up a small plastic tray of mealworms this year. And just last week, I bought them a low-to-the-ground water tray. Now I think they might be here to stay.

“You didn’t need to change the water, it’s not that cold out,” said Janyce, sitting in the dark on the drivers’s side of the car, waiting for me. “We need to get there before 9am for my meeting and we still need to stop for coffee.”

“The bluebirds like the water tepid and clean,” I said.

“Will you listen to yourself?” she said, waiting for me to get my seat belt fastened.

The same girlfriend also turned me on to a new Instagram account to follow. The Daily James is an artist with 201k followers. The tagline reads: “Our big city yard is a wildlife habitat. It started when a wild raven knocked on our window. Respect all life. See what happens.”

Their “spark bird” set them off on a whole Covid-era business venture. They turned their yard into a wildlife habitat and named all the creatures that roam through it. Now they sell merchandise to support it with an Amazon partnership for all the bird watching gear. I’m not sure how I feel about that, actually. But I do wish I had thought to scroll through a few of those photos and videos last night, to laugh at some good things instead of the news.

And speaking of good things, Janyce has appeared again in the doorway this morning.

“I have an excellent idea for breakfast,” she says. “Get this. We make oatmeal with that last banana and we add that little piece of almond fig cake I brought from home from the charcuterie the other night. Ahh haa? Yeah? Almond and fig goodness, right?” she says.

Janyce never wakes up in the middle of the night to scroll through the worst of humanity’s news on her computer.

And Janyce also wakes up first in the morning, too. She holds an outstretched arm to me with a coffee cup, talking about what we should make for breakfast, or for lunch, or after we have breakfast, what we will have next for lunch, and maybe even the cocktail idea for later after we take a walk on the beach, followed by what we are going to have for dinner.

I stop typing to take a long sip of my newly replenished cup of strong hot coffee, perfectly made. We have the whole Saturday before us and nothing much to do, either.

I’m the luckiest person on the planet. I have zero problems.

“Here, take a look at the Hippos with Covid,” I say, and turn my computer screen to show her the picture. “They are okay, they just have runny noses. Everything is okay.”

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Readers: what’s your spark bird? leave me a comment and let me know.