It is interesting how life leads you through a series convergences and divergences with the people around you.  As a teenager we push away from our parents searching for identity.  Later, finding our place in the work world may cause us to move to a new place and make new friends.  Weddings, births, and deaths bring far flung relatives together reinforcing and renewing once eroding relationships.  I have learned that the seeds from which a convergence or divergence grows are all around waiting for their turn.  The bird feeder recently became the latest focus of a convergence for me that spanned the generational continuum.

While preparing to go out and replenish the feeder my three year old daughter asked if she could help.  “Of course” I said and off we went.  She held the food while I retrieved the feeder.  As we filled the feeder the fearless chickadees inspected our progress shouting out what could be interpreted as pointed commands to fill the feeder pronto!  It was then that I discovered that I had a pint-sized ornithologist with me: “That is a chickadee, they say chick-a-dee.”  “Do you think the band-tailed pigeons will come after we are done?”  “Are they the same ones at grandma and grandpa’s?”  “Dad, the Steller’s jays really make a mess.”  We know that our children learn by watching what we do and say but it seems to me that my daughter is developing an interest in wildlife, a convergence for father and daughter.

 

Later that week my dad called with a bird identification problem.  I should have seen this convergence coming.  My mom and dad have been feeding birds for a few years now.  Mom started it and my dad, retired from the construction business, first deigned to keep food in the feeder but now has a keen interest in bird feeding.  The convergence had already begun but reached a focus when he attempted to describe a bird for identification over the phone.  First of all he had never asked me to identify a bird.  Second, he described a rock dove in a way that can only be described as Zen-like.  He saw the bird with the beginner’s eye.  Seeing all the colors, not only the birder’s field marks, he came to see the bird in his own way not of the way of the jaded birder.  The description of the bird so threw me that it took a few field mark questions to determine that it was a rock dove.  But the identification did not diminish his interest.  He was clearly impressed with the color and upon reflection so was I.

 

Now when we go over to visit my folks we have a trans-generational convergence; two beginning birders representing each end of the human life span, and a third trying to remember and capture once again the innate beauty of all the birds at the feeder.  After we arrive there is a meeting at the feeder to see who is visiting.  The bird feeder has become the latest focus of a convergence that spanned the generational continuum.  As we feed birds year after year it can become habitual and we forget the importance of feeding birds; important for the birds but also for us.

(Article written & provided by J. Baker)

 

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