Birds of the Northeast

DECEMBER,2004

t seems like only last week we were pulling the errant dandelion from the garden, and it is now the Christmas season.  Time waits for no man; and lately it seems as if we are all cramming more and more ‘stuff’ into less and less time. 

So much for my haggard philosophy of life. 

Meanwhile I’m busy with the proverbial Christmas cards.  Receiving as well as addressing.  I always look carefully at each “incoming” card to note the tone and beauty of what was sent.  As you also have probably noticed, more and more cards have birds and other wild critters featured on the front.  Sort of comforting to see the glory of nature so well represented at this time of year.

Many different birds are depicted on the cards.  My guess would be the Chickadees are the most common, followed by Cardinals, Canada Geese, and the Dove of Peace—which is simply a white bird we recognize as a dove, generally carrying an olive branch or a piece of holly in its beak. 

Crows and owls are usually not found on the fronts of cards, although Penguins are.  Washington has not had a Penguin seen in this area for many, many years.  I could get very bold about the Penguins and say, “Washington has NEVER had a Penguin waddle through.”  But never is a very strong term and one has to be very careful using it—especially when writing about Penguins in Warren County.  Except the ones on the Christmas cards.  It is the cold and snow which makes some artist think of Penguins when illustrating cards, but for the majority of us—seeing a Penguin in Washington is about as likely as hooking a tuna in the Shabbecong.

Of course the music of the season also features a few birds.  The most notable song being “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”  That song generally sends me into peals of laughter as I picture the poor dame who gets all those well-meaning gifts.

On the first day, she gets “a partridge in a pear tree.”  The song probably originated in merry olde England where “partridge” is a standard name for about 40 members of various bird families such as quail, pheasants, francolins, jungle fowl, and peacocks.  In this country, the various grouse species—Blue Grouse, Ruffed Grouse, Sage Grouse, Spruce Grouse, and Sharp-tail Grouse are as close to the partridges as we get.  The Gray Partridge and the Chukar are introduced species.  All this is neither here nor there as the pathetic girl in the song gets a total of TWELVE partridges as well as TWELVE pear trees.

Pears are a delicacy at this time of year, even though they are a fall fruit.  The lucky damsel gets the TWELVE trees with probably not an inch of space for even one tree.

Day three brings “three French hens.”  We are still with the birds.  The French hens are presumably quite remarkable birds for eating.  French cooking is not noted for preparing anything from a scrawny chicken.  So the girl receiving all the “gifts” will end up with 30 fattened French hens.  She could open a French restaurant with that bunch, but remember there’s more to come.

On the fourth day she acquires four calling birds.  Call birds were ducks—generally smaller than the mallard—used by hunters as decoys.  They were kept in front of the hunter by tying cords with lead weights to their feet to keep them from paddling or flying away.  This is known as ‘shooting over live decoys’ and is illegal these days.  The girl received four calling birds every day for nine days—for a total of 36 ducks!

Let’s see, it is just the fourth day and she already has 10 birds to feed and house.  But on the fifth day, as we all know, she has a reprieve from the feeding and cleaning as she gets the five gold rings.  She’ll end up with forty gold rings, but 184 birds, and forty cows—that’s “eight maids a milking” every day for five consecutive days.  The bedraggled recipient would be near exhaustion, the house would be in shambles, the neighbors would be calling the SPCA, and the new sewer plant wouldn’t hold all of the you-know-what.  Remember there are eight maids for five days, nine ladies dancing for four days, ten leaping lords every day for three days, eleven pipers for two days, and one vast set of twelve noisy drummers the last day.  That’s a total of 131 people milking cows, leaping, dancing, piping, drumming and generally frightening the 184 birds.

The picture is not very settling—not your cozy, warm-and fuzzy Christmas scene.  A true mess actually.  Even if she pawned the forty gold rings, I doubt if they would cover the cost of feeding, housing, and cleaning up the messes of the cows and the birds. 

Now you know why I get the giggles every time I hear the song.  The mental image is hilarious.  An if some poor schlep of a delivery boy comes to our front door some day with a sweet little partridge sitting in an even sweeter little pear tree-- I’m getting out of town as fast as I can.

Al and I would like to wish all of you a very, very warm and loving holiday. 

Keep looking up!

Julianne Weinmann, Copyright © 2005 Julianne Weinmann. All rights reserved.  Revised: June 10, 2008 .