For the birds...

As I type this, there's a female cardinal on the windowsill of my sitting room window. She's been either at this window or at the dining room windows every day for weeks now. The bird will peck at the window glass, which alerts the cats that she's there. Right now, Mickey Kitty has just raced up to the window to try and catch the cardinal. The only thing he accomplishes is hitting his little nose up against the window. The bird flies away as soon as that happens, but then comes back to the glass minutes later. Makes me wonder if the bird is teasing the cats, then laughing as their noses hit the window.

We must have a nest of cardinals in the yard because they're here all day, every day. At the lake house, we have a ficus tree on the back porch, left there from the previous owners because a family of cardinals have been nesting in that tree for years. The tree is underneath the porch roof, so the baby birds are protected from the wind and the rain, and there are four little nests in that tree. Neat and tidy nests, very sturdy and compact with lots of tiny twigs and even some bits of string.

My Aunt Dolly has always loved cardinals... her favorite birds, for as long as I can remember. She says they are elegant without being too showy. To this day, she feeds the birds every morning, and she's been doing that for as long as I can remember. Both of my grandmothers fed the birds every day as well... bits of bread crusts, leftover bread and cookie crumbs. Nothing was thrown away.... when a loaf of Italian bread was sliced, all those crumbs were saved in a little cup for the birds, the crumbs scattered on the lawn underneath the birdbath. Unlike the Italian bread we get here in Texas, a "real" loaf of Italian bread in New York has a crusty outside, so you get lots of teeny crumbs with each slice.

My grandmother (my dad's mother) loved the bluebirds. On a good Spring day, there would be more than a few in her yard when I was a kid. Petite little birds with baby-blue feathers and a touch of a buff-color on their chests. Before Kennedy Airport was enlarged and re-named, it was called Idlewild Airport... a much smaller airport with huge search-lights that could be seen from my grandmother's attic. When the airport was made bigger and got busier, there were less and less bluebirds in my grandmother's yard. The cardinals still came every day, as did the sparrows and the doves, but seeing a bluebird was very rare.

On a summer day, my grandmother used to sit in the shade of the big apple tree in her yard so she could see the birdbath underneath the peach tree in the side yard near the kitchen window. She would sit quietly, either snapping green beans or crocheting doilies and shawls. She would watch the birdbath , searching for her favorite bluebirds. If a plane went overhead, she'd look up into the sky, not understanding how something so huge could get up that high and stay up. She blamed the planes for chasing away the bluebirds.

When we were up at the lake after the holidays, I saw a bluebird in the backyard. I looked twice, just to make sure. But a bluebird it was... gorgeous little thing. I swear, the last bluebird I saw, I must have been in my freshman year of high school. I distinctly remember my grandmother pointing a bluebird out to me as she sat in her yard. "See the birds... see the bluebird...." Then she told me to go into the kitchen and get the cup of bread crumbs from the kitchen counter and sprinkle them on the grass.

"Feed the birds... it warms the heart." She would always say that, but in Italian, not English. I don't know how to say it in Italian. But whatever language the words are spoken, it is so true. Feeding the birds does warm the heart. And there are some days when your heart really needs some extra warmth.