Northern Rough-winged Swallow adult taking a short breather on Main Pond.

The Northern Rough-winged Swallows are on a road trip to Mexico, on their way south for the winter, and yesterday, they stopped off at Montlake Fill to take a break.

Northern Rough-winged Swallows are plain brown- and-white birds who come up to Washington every spring to nest in burrows they dig into sand banks. They’re called rough-winged because they have a tiny, rough fringe of feather-barbs on the leading edges of their wings. No one knows why.

The kids were, I think, driving their parents crazy. Although they are perfectly able to catch their own insects, the youngsters sat on the willow snag at the north end of Main Pond and squawked loudly to be fed. The parents swooped low over the water, caught bunches of bugs, and hurried back to their brood, whose open mouths seemed to be mere gateways to bottomless pits of hunger.

Long-time educator  and founder of Northwest Montessor Schools Marietta Rawson once told me that the thing kids want most in all the world is to be grown up.

Maybe so. But when it comes to flying your own way and catching your own bugs, even the swallows seem glad to cling to mom and dad just a little while longer.

Semipalmated Sandpiper on Main Pond

Much as I admire the Semipalmated Sandpiper who has been visiting the Fill the past couple of days, I have no desire to become one. I wouldn’t be any good at it.

Semipalmated Sandpipers are sparrow-sized shorebirds who breed in the tundra along the coast of the Arctic Ocean from Alaska, across Nunavut, to Newfoundland. They spend the winter in Peru and Brazil, migrating mostly through the Midwest, a flight distance of more than 7,000 miles. That’s14,000 miles round-trip.

Do you realize how far 14,000 miles is? I live a mile away from my local Safeway and make three trips there a week.  It would take me 44 years to travel that far.

As I get older, I find myself hesitating to begin jobs that I’ve done often enough to know exactly how long they will take and exactly how much energy they will require. Mowing the grass is a good example: one hour to wrestle the electric mower from the back yard to the front and clean out the grass-catcher that should have been cleaned out the last time but wasn’t, two hours to mow, one hour to drive to Home Depot to buy a new cord because I’ve just run over it and cut it in two for the umpteenth time, an hour to use the weed-whacker to edge the sidewalk, another hour to drive to Home Depot to buy new cord because the spool ran out.

What a colossal drag. Maybe I’ll just pretend I’m cultivating a prairie in my front yard and that’s why the weeds are higher than my head.

I can easily imagine myself as a Semipalmated Sandpiper, living the good life on the beaches of Peru, sipping the occasional sand worm, nibbling on a bug hors d’oeuvre, when all my friends start talking about flying north to breed. “Hilda, let’s skip over Kansas this year – it’s so flat and hot. We could fly right past it if we got a good start.” “Hey, Jim, let’s travel with the babes this year – I hear they’re skipping Kansas.”

Meanwhile, all I can think about is how happy I am on the beach and how tired I will be flying past Kansas.

We all know a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, but that would be ridiculous.

I suppose someday, in our steady march toward constructing the Theory of Everything, we will know all there is to know about the lives of Black Swifts, one of the most secretive and mysterious birds in all the world.

Black Swifts are scimitar-shaped flyers who spend most of their lives somewhere in South America – no one knows where. They arrive here in June on their way to nesting sites in the Cascades – exactly where is nearly impossible to say. Fewer than a hundred nests are known anywhere in North America.

In the early mornings of the summer, when storm clouds gather over the foothills to the east, the swifts leave their mountain fasts and wing their way to us down here in the lowlands.  They come to hunt insects on the fly, soaring so quickly overhead they can appear out of nowhere and vanish if you blink your eyes. Like magic.

Magic has a bad name these days. We say it is merely illusion, or primitive ignorance, or childish belief in the supernatural. Science has taught us there is no monster under the bed, no voodoo that can make your unpleasant boss feel like she’s being poked with pins. Science has explained to us why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, day after day, without any incantations from us. Science tells us why and when the rain will come, how disease can kill or be cured. Science invented cell phones and explains how they work, though they still seem magical to me. Science has yet to figure out why my husband’s imitation of Dr. Strangelove is so funny, but it’s only a matter of time until Science has distilled every thought and feeling into chemistry. Bit by bit, science is driving out magic, and I guess that’s a good thing.

But I hope that science never drives out wonder. When a Black Swift floats a few feet above my head, as one did earlier this week, and his button-black eyes stare into mine, and he spreads out his wings and his little forked tail to hover over me like a dark angel, he is wonderful.  My heart soars with him, and I am wonder- full.

Immature American Robin

Oh, to be a young robin, out in the world for the very first time, finding your first worm, singing your first song! It is early June, and the young ones are beginning to leave their nests. Everywhere you look, there are youngsters flying around, some with their parents still in tow, others completely alone already.

You can usually tell the young birds apart from the adults because their field marks are different. Immature robins have black spots on their breasts. Young Oregon Juncos are striped instead of plain, although their outer tail feathers are white like an adult’s. Newly fledged swallows are clumsy when they fly over the pond and dip down on the wing to take a drink of water — most of them make a big splash instead of a delicate ripple. Young human kids are especially distinctive: many are wearing mortarboards this month and have stars in their eyes.

Whether human or avian, they all think they are ready to be out on their own. We of the gray hair know better, but we bite our lips, sit on our hands, say nothing about our worries. The young must do this, and we must let them. Wish them well, help them if you can, but quietly. They must learn to fly free.

As for our worries, take heart. Many of the young will be back, to settle into their outgrown nests again and ask us take care of them. At least two of the juvenile Bald Eagles who hatched out a year or two ago are hanging around the Fill now, hoping to be fed by Ma and Pa. My binoculars are not quite powerful enough to read the expression on the parent eagles’ faces, but I get the impression they are rolling their eyes, maybe even muttering under their breath: “Get a job.” It makes me smile.

I’m a great believer in going to the hospital to have babies. None of this have-your-baby-at-home stuff for me. In the hospital, you press buttons and people bring you things. When you’re done with those things, you press more buttons and people come and take them away. You don’t have to cook, you don’t have to clean, you can limit visitors. It’s all very peaceful.

I have especially fond memories of the hospital in which I gave birth to my second child. Labor was short. A nurse showed me my gorgeous new son, then took him away to bathe him and put on his first diaper. My husband and I just glowed. Then somebody wheeled me into my room, and I went blissfully to sleep. When I awoke, I immediately began to look forward to pressing buttons. The first button brought me a nurse, who said they would shortly start bringing the babies to the new moms to be fed. Soon, I could hear the nurses dropping babies off in rooms down the hall. Coos and oohs and ahs filled the hallway. All of a sudden, one of the newborns began to yell. And yell. And yell. The baby was in frenzy and could not be soothed. Its cries were insistent, unrelenting, loud, and annoying. “Wow,” I said to myself, “I’m sure glad that baby isn’t mine.” Just then, a nurse brought that baby into my room and handed him over. Yikes.

Newly hatched Pied-billed Grebe baby on Southwest Pond, Montlake Fill

I was reminded of this story yesterday when I heard peeping yells coming from Southwest Pond. I hurried over to see what was happening and found a newly hatched Pied-billed Grebe baby in a frenzy, yelling at its parents to feed it now now NOW. The parents were frantically diving for fish and stuffing their catch into the baby’s mouth as fast as they could. The baby stopped peeping only long enough to swallow, and then resumed its crying. Its noises were insistent, demanding, unrelenting, loud, and annoying.

I watched the parents sympathetically. How well I remember those days. I smiled. “Wow,” I said, “I’m sure glad that baby isn’t mine.”

The Brown Creeper family that has nested in the cottonwoods around Boy Scout Pond was out yesterday for the first time. Brown Creepers are small songbirds decked in natty brown and white checks on their backs and spanking white feathers on their fronts. They have stiff tails and long, curved bills that perfectly adapt them for their lifestyle: creeping up the trunks of trees as they probe for insect prey.

Male and female Brown Creepers look alike, so I couldn’t tell Mom apart from Dad. However, Junior was easy to identify. He was sporting odd tufts of down here and there, and his bill was quite small. Like many long-billed birds, creepers keep their bill size under control in the egg, where the fit is tight. Once they hatch, creepers start growing their bills to a respectable size.

I must point out here that I am speaking only in terms of length: when Junior opened his beak to demand to be fed, his width was impressive. His mouth was school-bus yellow inside, and when he turned it to face me, all I could see was a giant yellow maw, squeaking for food.

How his parents resisted this demand was beyond me, but they did. I think they were tired of stuffing it, as they have been doing for the past several weeks, and figured it was time for Junior to learn how to forage for himself.

Junior did not agree. As his parents carefully showed him how to probe while hitching their way up a tree trunk, Junior stayed firmly anchored to the trunk lower down, crying piteously. Relentlessly. He reminded me of another toddler I had seen at the Fill recently, a little boy about two years old. The boy’s father had decided his kid should walk for himself, so he set him down on the Loop Trail, told him it was time to walk on his own, and strode off down the trail. The boy, however, had other ideas and refused to move. The dad urged him to come along. The boy looked mutinous. The father finally said, “Okay, I’m going to leave you there,” and slowly moved away. “I’m leaving you now. I’m really going. Goodbye.” The boy just stood there. Finally, the dad came back, hoisted the kid onto his shoulders and marched off.

He had learned something every experienced parent knows. Never call a toddler’s bluff.

Back at Boy Scout Pond, the Brown Creeper parents caught an insect, flew down to their stubborn toddler, and stuffed it in.

When I was a child, I used to look forward every year to Washington’s Birthday. Not that I was a big fan of George’s, mind you. I was too young to know anything about our first president other than the fact that he never told a lie. This virtue was almost beyond my comprehension, for, even as a six-year-old, I knew that always telling the truth was nearly impossible for morally unformed people such as children, let alone politicians.

In any case, what I liked about George’s birthday was that every year, a local ice cream maker made a few batches of vanilla ice cream laced with ripe cherries. I still remember that lovely ice cream, the tartness of the cherries, the smooth sweetness of the vanilla, the icy coldness melting to cream in my mouth.

The treat was available for only a few days a year, and then it was gone, not to return for 360 long days, an eternity for a child.

I was reminded of those days recently when three Blue-winged Teals showed up at the Fill. Blue-winged Teals are shy ducks of the summer who come to our state from South America. The males have spectacular heads of gun-metal gray accented with dramatic white crescents in front of their eyes. They breed in the open-country wetlands of Eastern Washington and stay at the Fill for only a day or two. I don’t see them every year, and when I do, I know my eyes get big, my mouth makes a silent O, and I am a child once again, savoring a treat that doesn’t last long but is all the sweeter for that.

In this age of global trade, where the need to wait for treats has been banished, it is good to be reminded that the Earth still does turn, time passes, and the seasons are fleeting. We must seize the moment and delight in each day.

We Seattleites, people of the gray, know how to appreciate these rare days of sunlight. Like King Akhnaten of ancient Egypt, we are sun-worshippers, in our own way. As pharaoh wrote more than 3,000 years ago in his Great Hymn to Aten, the Sun God:

“You created the world according to your desire, while you were alone:

All men, cattle, and wild beasts,

Whatever is on earth, going upon its feet,

And what is on high, flying with its wings.”

The birds—who, after all, are descended from reptilian-like dinosaurs—seem to love the sun as much as we do. They bask in the warmth heating up their feathers to glowing temperatures.

I say “glowing” because the reds, oranges, and yellows of our more colorful residents seem to radiate their own light from within, rather than merely reflect light from an outside source.

Such was my impression of a pair of Yellow-headed Blackbirds who sprang forth from the Main Pond, leaped into the blue sky, and soared across my path the other day. The male’s Rudolph Valentino eyes were the black of burnt coal, the yellow of his head and breast like a solar flare, the white of his wing patches nearly incandescent.

A living bonfire of beauty that lifts the spirits of all who can catch the sun.

A mighty river of birds is flooding our state right now, a sea of migration as inexorable as the tides. Each night, birds by the million leap into the sky from their winter homes throughout the tropics and deserts and plains of the south. With only the power from their own tiny muscles and—if they’re lucky—an occasional helpful tailwind, they fly hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles in one go, arriving at their waystations at dawn, exhausted, thirsty, hungry.

We see them here at the Fill every day now, clinging to a likely branch, perched on a trembling stem, searching for a meal that will replenish their stores of fat. Many of the birds are making this epic journey north for the first time in their lives. Many more have done it before and know the way. Their songs fill the morning with sound, sweet for some, raspy for others, each species singing a different tune, following a slightly different pattern of travel, of life.

Male Lazuli Bunting at the Fill.

Take a moment to listen, to search the next quaking twig you see to spot a little shape that may pop into view for only a second. Give the traveler a nod or a smile, congratulate the visitor on coming this far, encourage the ones who still have farther to go. The birds won’t care, but you might. Because for one small moment, you will be the conscious witness of a true wonder of nature, and in that moment, you will rejoin the natural world in which we all live.

When it comes to plumage, Dunlins are extremists, like many other members of the sandpiper family. To paraphrase an old nursery rhyme, “When they are drab, Dunlins are very, very drab; when they are bright, they are torrid.”

Dunlins in winter are two-tone blahs: nondescript dark on top, white below. But when spring arrives, Dunlins assume an altogether different guise. Their back feathers become a fiery symphony of burnt orange, glowing rust, and ashy black. Dark chevrons of brown march up and down their white breasts. Most stunning of all, Dunlins sport a giant black bulls-eye on their snow-white bellies.

Most of the spring Dunlins who come through the Fill this time of year are in the middle of “the change,” like this one that was here last week.

Yesterday, though, a fully bright Dunlin appeared on Main Pond, glowing in the weak sunlight of a typical Seattle April. The bird was foraging at the pond’s edge, minding its own business, when a crow flew in and began to chase it.  The Dunlin flew away but returned when the crow had gone. Unfortunately, the crow saw it reappear and went after it again. This happened over and over. At last, the Dunlin managed to sneak back to its feeding area unobserved. As it stood there on the shore, panting, it looked over at me. It seemed bewildered by the numerous attacks.

I was moved to quote Gene Wilder. “You’re a good looking fellow, do you know that? People laugh at you, people hate you, but why do they hate you? Because… they are jealous! Look at that boyish face. Look at that sweet smile. Do you want to talk about physical strength? Do you want to talk about sheer muscle? Do you want to talk about the Olympian ideal? You are a god! And listen to me, you are not evil. You… are… good.”

The Dunlin gave a little peep and went back to feeding, happy again.