I wish for many talents. To know how to sing, how to play the guitar, the piano. The saxophone! When it comes to knowledge—something I think would make me a better writer and poet—I want to know everything there is to know about birds and flowers. I wish I could look at it or hear a chirp and instantly identify the bird. Like some people do. The only bird I think I can recognize on sight is a vulture. And a pigeon. I can also tell a pigeon’s cry because my brother kept a few in our compound in Koindu. Though if I heard an owl cry in the daytime I wonder if I’d know the difference.

This is my way of saying I love birds. Because all that we wish to be near we love.

Back in Kankan, small little birds used to visit our compound in troves, pecking at grains that fell out of the pestle when my mothers and sisters would work to remove the husk from the rice. I loved watching them fly down, hop around, and fly away. I’d try to catch one; thinking I could sneak up on them. I think I even tried a few traps. I don’t remember ever catching one.
One day, feeling nostalgic, I described the birds in a search engine, and the Internet Oracle said it might have been a finch, or a red-headed quelea. Maybe so, maybe not.

Often places don’t well represent their names. Not after a while. Like I can’t tell you what’s golden or valley about Golden Valley. Most cities named Clearwater don’t have clear waters within their borders. But Robbinsdale, where I live today, wears its name like a symphony. Every spring to winter morning, the trees say hallelujah and the shrubs say amen. If you are lucky you’d get a divine distraction from your worries.

I can’t tell whether they are robins, but I see many birds from my living room home office window, where I sit most weekdays like today, watching the seasons go by and the birds sing their morning, noon and evening. It’s a beautiful distraction from the keyboard and Teams calls. A sweet escape when I’m stuck between sentences or how best to design a PowerPoint presentation.

What is it? Is it their size, diversity of species, each unique in color and song? Is it because they can fly, sit on the apex of a tree and take in a view far and wide. Like they can see the future when we are stuck by gravity?

I read somewhere this week that birdwatching is rapidly rising in popularity. Mostly from young people taking interest. Consequently, the average age of the participants has gone from 49 down to 47. Meaning at 49, I’m at a ripe old age to learn about the birds at my window, and in my neighborhood. Maybe go back to Kankan and readily identify the birds of my childhood.

All I have ever wanted was to know the difference between a robin and a blue jay, to know exactly the bird the writer is talking about when he says a warbler or a chickadee. When I look up and see one perched on a Fall bright tree, or flying through its yellow leaves, I can call it by name, know where it’s going to pass the winter. In the future when I recall this day, instead of just saying, “there were birds at my window,” I could say, “that one time in Robbinsdale I passed the Fall with nuthatch, cardinals, and yes robins too.”

The world is too fast. Easy to forget we were once wild and free, to sing to the morning sun.