cardinal

What of the winter lives of birds? We’ve become neighborly with a pair who have selected our feeder as their regular morning hangout. We take pains to make certain the feeder is filled and accessible each day.

Rich red male and smoke tan cardinals. They arrive together or separately and perch on aluminum wires attached to the store-bought feeder on our deck railing. The bird feeder was a purchase we made; the choice arrived at after research and discussion of the hazards of putting food out for birds only to have it eaten by squirrels and other small rodents.

We made an attempt with another device, watching frustrated as bushy tailed thieves gorged themselves and made a mess of the deck planking with remains of food they’d discarded in a rush to devour everything. Later, large birds left droppings along the flooring as they fed on squirrel castoffs. Preparing meals outdoors became a walk in an excrement minefield—meals seated at our deck furniture unthinkable. But the current device is a success and the unwanted have sought other decks and easier prey.

Beauty survives the coldest that New Hampshire delivers. Often, as one visitor perches to feed, the other waits in small trees nearby—spindly winter limbs naked of leaves—the male spells the female and she flies off, assuming her partner’s place among the saplings.

We sit and watch as Cardinals feed, before the sun rises and the horizon glow washes the white landscape with sufficient light to distinguish color and shape. Like shadows the birds slowly reveal unspeakable brilliance and the morning sky moves on.

I suspect the pair see that we’re here, sipping coffee, separated, on my blue chair and your sofa space, alien if familiar forms, part of their survival ritual. The quiet feels intimate.

Snows arrived in late December, layering lawns, roofs, and meadows, then stayed through January and into February such that frozen white has become a set style of the neighborhood.

Some mornings the skies take on a strong pearl pink luminescence that I believe is a byproduct of this permanent snow cover.

I stare at the female cardinal, her beak an unblemished, orange, the color of a not quite ripe pumpkin. Her head bobs as she pecks at seed. Her partner’s solid red feathers and streaks of black paint across his head and along his wings give him the look of a tribal witch doctor or a warrior-dancer gearing for battle.

Then I think of the punishment the cold and the winds mete from late December until those days in mid April when the threat of Canadian highs meeting lows out of the south abate and the earth becomes friendlier. Does the winter always kill or will the predators of spring and summer have at this pair rather than the cold? And as they now find safety beneath eaves or under decks and at the crooks of barn beams, what happens when shelter isn’t enough? And in all of this, which is likely to die first and what of the other?

In the mornings—for years—I’ve prepared coffee for us. I don’t know when the practice began. I think it settled as an easy way to please and surprised me that I could do it without complaint or expectation of reward. You remind me often that you enjoy it and in truth it isn’t a bother. More than that, it’s a task that I enjoy for the rare selfless sense it leaves me with.

Oh, I get annoyed at times when my pudgy fingers struggle to separate the filters from one another. There are times when a bend or seam clogs the hot water egress and the reservoir fills with soaked grounds, overflowing onto the kitchen counter and dripping onto our hardwood floors. I feel the heat at the back of my neck and curse the machine, forgetting each time that I secured the filter to the holder and smoothed it against the walls. But frustrations pass like mini storms and don’t diminish the lovely confidence I feel in the chore; they don’t take away from the pleasure you seem to get so many mornings, having your coffee ready as you wake and wander groggy-eyed into our kitchen.