Patrick Kelly, Author at Wild About Utah

June 1, 2020March 12, 2022

A Pretty Decent Salve

I saw a bird miss the line the other day. I had never seen that before. Truth is, birds sticking the landing was so ingrained in my very concept of a bird that I had not even considered it before. It was pretty funny. [A Pretty Decent Salve]
The small black bird flew in hot to the powerline that runs next to my house, and came in just a bit too low. He couldn’t recover his trajectory, and instead of giving up, chose to use the chin of his beak to hang on like a feathered J hook. He kept flapping to stay on the line, perhaps because he didn’t trust his balance, but eventually the effort was too much, and he let his beak slide off backwards, and flew on. The whole thing only lasted a few seconds. I can only assume he stuck his next landing attempt.

Fledging Bird Landing Courtesy & © Rob Soto, Artist — Fledging Bird Landing
Courtesy & © Rob Soto, Artist

What struck me about the whole thing, aside from the comedy of a bird having a moment of failure at being birdy, was that he decided that hanging on trepidatiously by his beak was better than missing altogether. Why did he decide to do this? Was the urge to land by any means stronger than the urge to land with his feet? Was he embarrassed and in a reflex decided that some contact was better than none? Or was it a game of horse, where he dared the other of his lot to match his silly feat?

Whatever it was, I can’t say. What I can say is that it was funny. Now I’ll forever see birds differently, too, knowing that making the landing isn’t as unconscious as I once thought, and so I can watch a once-passive act with a bit more suspense for slapstick.

I saw another funny thing recently, too. It also involved birds seen from my home. What I know is that I was watching a dance, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell if it was a warning display, or a proposition gone poorly.

There is a small tribe of house sparrows that lives in some shrubs adjacent to my home. I was working out on my porch in the sunshine one day when I heard an unfamiliar song in a familiar voice. I looked up to the top of a dead crabapple tree and saw a male sparrow doing a funny little jig. He was orbiting a female sparrow also perched in the tree, hopping and spinning from branch to branch, singing his flittery song. His back was flat, perpendicular to whatever branch he was on, and his wings were held in L-shapes which ran parallel to his flat back. It reminded me of the robot somehow.

I know that some birds dance, but I never thought it of the sparrows I see everyday and had never seen dance before. I’ve probably seen thousands of those little guys, but none apparently as gregarious before with me in the audience. I don’t know if the male was brave, indifferent, or if I was just lucky and this sort of thing happens all the time. Either way, his dance looked beautifully silly. It made me laugh to imagine myself dancing like this in the future, and when people looked at me quizzically, I could just say that I learned it from a sparrow. I could imagine the puzzled faces, tilted heads, and eye rolls: my personal humor at their gentle confusion.

After a few short minutes, the female sparrow being danced at, who had the whole time remained on a single perch just watching perhaps as perplexed as I was, flew off. In the end, I guess it did not matter if the male was dancing as a warning of territorial infringement, or as a suggestion of spring tangos. Whether the male was successful or failed cannot be told. He was though, I’ll say, the best house sparrow I’ve ever seen dance. So there’s that.

In all, it’s been a good challenge for me to look for everyday things with a lighter touch. It’s also been good to take time to look at what’s here, to challenge myself to enjoy some sunshine moments, to drive myself to look at average birds with interest, to upset my assumptions and learn why they’re not so average after all.

In this time, where a lot of what we are all doing is looking to a brighter future, imagining going back to familiar ruts, I’ve at least found that there is something that brightens the present in challenging yourself to be present: to take a minute in the sunshine, to take a minute to watch a bird you’ve seen a thousand times, to still find good humor in a still good world. While everything isn’t perfect, and we may feel like that bird who missed the line, confused and in a panic to say the least from being in uncharted waters, having a little laugh and finding the buoyant joy inherent in the natural world that’s always been there, and can always be there, is a pretty decent salve. I recommend it.

I’m Patrick Kelly and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
A Pretty Decent Salve
Images: Images Courtesy & Copyright Rob Soto, Artist, all rights reserved
Audio: Contains audio Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver
Text: Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Additional Reading

Kubota, Taylor, What makes birds so good at sticking their landings?, Stanford Engineering, Transportation & Robotics, Stanford University, August 09, 2019, https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/what-makes-birds-so-good-sticking-their-landings

Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org

April 27, 2020January 24, 2021

Spring’s Way

Springtime in Cache Valley is marked by many events. It is a seasonal turn full of unrelenting life. The signs and the emotions they revive are marked by the beauty found in every hour of the day: from the day’s first bird songs, reviving the world from slumber, to their last evening’s lullaby.

Spring is also the time when warmth returns to the sunlight. After winter, I’ll often need to sit in the celestial rays to warm my bones, always hesitant lest snows reappear in May and I get soft. When I allow myself finally to ceade, the feeling of sun on my bare face in spring can only be described though as relief.

In the sun, too, one can’t help but breathe the smell of thaw, green buds, and warming winds. The many scents of earth remind me of its very mineral diversity, often thought of as monolithic, but truly clay, limestone, sand, gravel, and granite each fill the air’s bouquet differently in the wet and dry. These and other reminders which revise winter’s nostalgic fog breathe fresh life with even more vivacity.

Spring also brings with it labor, for who can truly say to love than those who enjoy its work? For me, I do love chores, especially in spring. I enjoy mowing the lawn, pruning trees, tilling the soil, and starting crops just as the Swede enjoys stacking split wood. It is a natural work to us both, a good work, and a labor of provision.

Additionally, these simple actions signify belonging to something larger than myself. It is how I honor the world around me: by acting in accordance to an older, more widely-shared order. I act as spring dictates, and thus am realized as its agent. Tis good to be an agent of such.

It also feels good to allow myself to slip into this annual cycle with such depth. I work on this, for no worthy cause is without struggle. I engage myself to grow the better in me as I make the choices of participation with the goal that one day it shall be habit. I leave the windows ajar to hear the birds and let their sage songs smudge my home. I walk often and stop to feel the catkin buds, listen to the absence of traffic, and smell big firs. I tend to wildflowers with my attention, nurturing tomorrow’s colors, medicines, and gifts.

So this spring, I invite you to try it on: being an agent of the season. Even if you do not garden, begin by experiencing what a new-born leaf feels like. Even if you do not mow, grab a blade, breathe it in, and harvest into your mind the scent. Even if you cannot understand them, open the windows and let the birds morning revelry and lullabies bookend your days. In these ways, we can all do good and live still by spring’s way.

I’m Patrick Kelly, and I’m Wild About Utah.

Spring’s Way-Credits:

Images: Image Courtesy & Copyright Patrick Kelly, Photographer, all rights reserved
Audio: Contains audio Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver
Text: Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Spring’s Way-Additional Reading

Parkhurst, Emma, MS, CHES, Eight Stress-relieving Activites to Give You a Break from the Coronavirus, USU Extension | Davis County, https://extension.usu.edu/covid-19/mental-and-emotional-well-being

Brower, Naomi, Four Tips for Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude, Utah State University Extension, https://extension.usu.edu/covid-19/mental-and-emotional-well-being

Brower, Naomi, Finding a Cure for the Sheltering-in-Place Blues, Utah State University Extension, https://extension.usu.edu/covid-19/mental-and-emotional-well-being

Swinton, Jonathon, Remaining Coronavirus Calm, Utah State University Extension, https://extension.usu.edu/covid-19/mental-and-emotional-well-being

Spring’s Way

March 30, 2020January 24, 2021

Hope

It feels odd to be denning in the spring. Our usual season to escape back into the out of doors has shifted radically for society at-large. It is odd because all the world around us is still warming, flying a little further each day, and here we are, humanity, digging in. It is for the best, for our own survival, but it is still not easy to go against the natural grain.

Hunkering down has affected us all, myself included. At first I was angry with frustration, as I’m sure you were too. I wanted something or someone to blame, to witness and call wrong. I struggled to find meaning in any of it; I struggled to hear anything but fear. It took me a while to come to remind myself that this frustration, this search for orientation, is the human way; it is natural to feel as we do in the omnipresence of the unknown.

What I discovered though is that this perspective, natural as it may be, is harmful if lived too long. My search was a dangerous one: for some externality of blame in an effort to begin to wrest back seeming control. When this is the path you choose to take, you find, as I did, that your anger is not quenched, but instead stoked. My focus was consumed by a blackness; it burned into my eye like a mariner’s missing star.

How then does one change course towards hope, and if not acceptance, then duty, empathy, and discipline for our fellow man? How do we get through such times?

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that “For God all things are good and right and just, but for man some things are right and others are not.” When I do not understand the world, the world I love so dearly, I think of these ancient words. I am reminded of this wisdom as I find myself unconsciously passing judgement upon the things I cannot control, and it stops me. In this wisdom I am reminded that, while there may be something to fear, there is no righteousness to my anger. True righteousness instead stems from the lessons of spring; the lessons of hope: of living on with tenacity, industry, and love, even in the face, however distant, of winter.

The righteousness of hope is found, too, in our choice to harness our actions with humble intention in light of what is happening in the world and the toll that is being taken. And just as fear is begotten in the meandering anger of blame, hope lives in our individual conscious actions. Only together can our actions create constellations for others to follow: cosmos among the chaos, shining brighter than the void’s pull. That we will all choose to do what is right, though it will not be easy, even in the face of doubt and fear, gives me hope.

So from the crocuses, the robins, and the fresh mud of our beautiful Utah spring, don’t forget that the world is still good and continues to be every day, even if sometimes it does not feel like it. Remind yourself of the lessons of spring by opening your window, listening to the birds, smelling deep the thawing air, and choosing to den in these times, fulfilling the spring lessons of tenacity, industry, and love. Choose to fix yourself as another orienting light of hope for those who still only see the night, or those who do not look up at all, for the world is good, it is everywhere, and we will always be of it. Here is to the persistence of life and hope found in us all this spring.

I’m Patrick Kelly, and I’m Wild About Utah.

Hope-Credits:

Images: Image Courtesy Pixabay
Audio: Contains audio Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver
Text: Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Hope-Additional Reading

Campbell, Joseph, Moyers, Bill, The Power of Myth, Bantum Books, Knopf Doubleday Publishing, Excerpt Courtesy Google Books, Heraclitus said: For God all things are good and right and just, but for man some things are right and others are not.

February 24, 2020January 24, 2021

Bird TV

There are some days that I just don’t have it in me to get outside. Maybe it’s the winter blues; maybe it’s exhaustion from a full day’s work. Either way, there are days where all I want to do is sit in the shelter of my home next to the heat ducts, or under the shade of a porch, and just exhale for hours. Sometimes, getting into the thick or exploring one of the many unmapped nooks of Utah’s majesty just isn’t happening.

I used to feel bad about this. I have but one life, one short blip of time upon this earth, I should be making use of every second. Whether it’s laboring on an overdue chore, or out testing my grit in harmony with Utah’s character, I need to be doing or I am dying; wasting the one life I am given.

bird tv: Two American Robins and a Northern Flicker Drinking from a Bird Bath Copyright © 2012 Linda Kervin — Two American Robins and a
Northern Flicker Drinking from a Bird Bath
Copyright © 2012 Linda Kervin

It took me some good time to not overcome this mentality, but see my struggle with new eyes: to wash them and see the world fresh. My ablution began by asking a simple question: how can I love the still wild land that has provided for my family, my nation, my species for millennia, even when I don’t have it in me to go out and commune with it as I know I should daily?

The answer for me was to find a way to appreciate and give in such a way that allows me great joy and relaxation, yet fulfills that higher narrative which only the world beyond human influence can provide. My answer was watching birds at my small backyard bird feeder.

While it may not sound as exciting as fording a river while carrying my dog, or submitting a mountain that still holds on to deep winter snows (again with my dog), it gives me a chance to still learn about the cut of my jib, to see what character I’m made of, and to see my place in the world, in creation, and in life.

bird tv: Chickadee Courtesy edbo23, photographer and Pixabay — Chickadee
Courtesy edbo23, photographer and Pixabay

I test my grit upon the stillness of my mind when cheerful chickadees begin to see me as a part of the scenery and perch ever closer and closer to the branches above me, or my honest acceptance when rackets of starlings come to steal the suet left out in hope of a Stellar’s jay or lost mountain bluebird, or my reflection on where my body will one day go as scraps from my last hunt are eaten by the local neighborhood magpie clan.

This is an activity I have dubbed Bird TV for those who will often find my attention turn suddenly from conversation with them to quickly confirming the flicker drumming on the feeder’s home tree marking its stake. Through the lessons of my wild neighbors and in my observation of them, I can still hold true to myself in seeking to commune with the real world daily. By watching Bird TV, I can learn the calls of different species, notice when they change with the food supply or weather, and reflect upon my place within this world and within this life, no narration but the sounds of the real world, alive and vibrant in front of me.

So when you don’t have the energy or time to be upon the land from which has given life to your family, our nation, and all species, consider setting out sunflower seeds, nuts, raw meat, or even jams for the birds. Set them someplace you can catch yourself noticing who’s visiting out of the corner of your eye through a window at any moment, and if another human asks as to why you’re being distracted by a what’s outside and not by the usual glowing rectangle, just let them know that it’s Bird TV. Invite them to watch too, and catch them up on what’s been going on in the world. Hopefully then they’ll learn to tune in too.

I’m Patrick Kelly and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:

Additional Reading

Project Feederwatch, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, https://feederwatch.org/

Axelson, Gustave, 30 Years of Project FeederWatch Yield New Insights About Backyard Birds, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, January 11, 2017, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/30-years-of-project-feederwatch-yield-new-insights-about-backyard-birds/