When the Birds Don't Migrate

In the Southwest there are birds who, for one reason or another, do not migrate. These residents are known to frequent golf course lakes, parking lots, and the trees in my front yard. In my years of bird admiring, I haven’t witnessed a resilience quite like these who weather the triple-digit summers.

I soon realized they were harboring the secrets of surviving in this desert: Wrens learned to hide nests in the cacti, which are brutal enough to deter predators and kind enough to offer watery fruit. The grackles stretch open mouthed in the rare shade, fluttering, and ration unappreciated drips from spickets or beneath cars. The roadrunners reserve their sprinting for the coolest morning hours and settle midday in the dense shrubbery where they can fill up on lizards.

Like humans, they are resourceful, adaptable, enduring. Yet, last spring there was a mallard who had wandered too far from her human-made pond. She settled in the little semi-circle of shade my car left upon the brittle lawn. I called her April and worried that she was preparing to build her nest right there in front of my house.

There, beneath the pigeon’s tree, idled two women who had endured more than they ever wanted. Undeniably, she was asking for help. I gave her water, and seed, and careful company. And she was gone by the coolest hours of the morning, back to her flock and pond.

Idealists will suggest not to feed the birds, or they will return, not to give them water, or they will linger. Yet, the limping pigeon slowly grazing for scattered seed on my bare backyard, finally able to feast without suffocating competition, was here before me and will remain after I move. And whether I fill the basin, grackles will loiter, if even to lap dirty water off my driveway in the morning. And we could discourse in circles about what is and isn’t natural. But before the golf courses, and gates, and metropolis, the birds were here and so was their water, and trees, and berries.

They do not leave. Through human-made drought and triple-digit heat, they suffer, starve, and still on the sidewalk, left there for weeks like some sort of morbid art installment termed, “the mass die-off”. This is not about preserving their independence. This is about kindness. Because my shady lawn, hose water, a few sprinklings of seeds in the hottest months will not break me, but it could save them.

And, the thing is, we are not just talking about the birds.

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Hello, wanderer.

I usually write poetry or fiction, but on occasion, I'm inspired to write about things that hit closest to home. Thank you for taking the time to read about the birds.

I have been admiring the birds for a few years around the U.S. The hot months in the southern states are miserable for all involved but especially the ones who can't find enough water. The photo I took is of the first goslings I saw this spring. These geese, like most in my area, will likely be here all year.

The term "mass die-off" has been used to describe the massive decline in bird population, particularly when hundreds of thousands of migratory song birds were falling out of the sky due to starvation and exhaustion in 2021. I used it here to describe the loss of the resident birds as well. Unfortunately, I have witnessed it: in the first weeks of triple-digit heat, sidewalks and lawns are littered with evidence of our lost winged friends.

If you enjoyed this ardent, little essay, you may like to read my mini-series about birds, and dogs, and finding happiness:

xoxo, for now,

your friend, watering the birds