Measure of Success

A sunny meadow on a rolling hill, edged in evergreen fence-row cedars, on a cold November afternoon: This was the setting for my mission. The mission: Delight in the close up viewing of a foraging Cedar Waxwing through the lenses of my trusty childhood binoculars. Before I get too far into the setup and description, I should probably tell you that my mission sort of failed. Not that I didn’t delight in wonderful views…they just didn’t include any Cedar Waxwings.

This mission’s genesis was sparked earlier in the week when an office-mate revealed, with her usual glee, that a certain rare winter visitor had made a brief and unexpected stop at her bird feeder. Now, I’ve never seen a Cedar Waxwing at our feeders, and have seen only one fly quickly through our yard a couple years ago. They aren’t common around this part of North Carolina (or if they are, they are very sneaky). I didn’t really accept my mission until this morning as I was in bed thumbing through Sibley’s bird behavior guide, when I happened across the Waxwing section and thought “Oh yeah, I should go find one of those!” Heather was up for an outing and so we decided on the Ayr Mount property near town. She would bring a novel and a coffee, and I would bring my binoculars. She would sit in the sun, on top of the hill in an Adirondack and I would sit…or stand, or crouch or lay anywhere in sight of a berry-loaded red cedar. WE BOTH would be bundled against the chill. And for almost two hours this is what we did.

My mission took me down the grassy hills, through well-trimmed pine thickets, beside the willow-pond and eventually back up the gentle slope to Heather. I walked slowly. My gloved hands alternated possession of the bulky binoculars. The shell of my jacket hood shielded the wind gusts and muffled all exterior sound. Pulling the hood back, I could listen for nearby calls, before tugging it snugly over my cold ears. I found a sunny perch below the base of a Hackberry tree and so lounged back into the soft, tufted grass. Resting on warm earth, I scanned the hedges.

The search for birds is a lesson in optics, both ocular and binocular. You must shift your focus or you really can’t “see the forest for the trees,” or in this case the birds for the trees. So I first looked at the broad view with only my eyes to catch the small stirrings of motion, the flicker of feathers, before swinging the big lenses up for a zoom. When you have this privilege of supersight you can get lost in the details.

I allowed myself to get lost in those other non-Waxwing details flitting and flying into the periphery. As a gray squirrel, snug against a trunk, quivered its tail, I could see the emotion in his eyes. A yearling brood of blue birds danced with each other and darted around their old home. The dark crows, casting shadows below, glided up to the treetops and mocked me just a little. And thus my mission failed, though with a pleasant measure of success. Remember to measure your successes (don’t skimp). By the way, Heather thinks she saw a Cedar Waxwing as she looked up from her page into the tree overhead. I’ll be heading back there soon.