Off the map

Last week I made some adjustments to the birdfeeders. We have two poles, each with two silos of seed and one rack of suet. The vigorous efforts of the crows, hanging onto the bottom of the suet trays like woodpeckers and craning their beaks up to peck at the suet in the rack, had put one pole on tilt and swung two of its silos around until they were knocking against each other. These poles are sectional combinations, and some of the sections are newer, with little slots and knobs that keep them from swinging around, and some of the sections are older and rotate freely. Not wanting to drill a hole through the metal just yet, I used some electrical tape to hold the poles in position once I had them straight. Things are calmer now, with the poles and feeders more orderly and symmetrical, and we are spending more time looking out the window instead of being jangled by the crooked pole.

All of that detail is background to the real story, which is yesterday's surprising visitor. We noticed him coming back to the feeders all day long. He ate seeds and suet. He was small, about the size of a robin, and black all over. He had a small tail. Clearly an icterid, but not a grackle. Having decided that, I got out Peterson to follow up on my hunch. Nothing is more puzzling than a bird that is all one color with few distinguishing features.

After some research, I came to the conclusion that my visitor is a rusty blackbird who has flown off the map. According to the migration map, he should only be here in the winter. Peterson adds that the rusty blackbird looks like a grackle with a small tail. I hope he will come back again today, but he may just be passing through.

I am not surprised to see birds out of season. The butterflies have shifted their egg-laying several times since I started watching them more carefully in 2004. For several years, the monarch caterpillars have munched right through the winter. I cover the milkweed with frost cloth through the freezes so there will be something for them just in case they appear.

Despite these and similar small caretakings on my part, however, things still go awry. Traveling to Tennessee and Kentucky all these years that I have lived away, keeping in touch with family and friends, even so some details have escaped my attention. A dark visitor we thought we might see many years down the road has now appeared out of season in our lives, not waiting for winter.

With the weather all over the seasons, of course the birds are all over the map. The little rusty blackbird reminds me how much the most careful tending cannot accomplish, and how unpredictable even a world with seasons can be.