Birds, Broadway and Mark Twain
Meet one of my winged friends:
Every so often, if I am prepared, which means, if I am quite and patient, I am treated to a visit from my winged my friends such as this guy — just a couple of yards beyond where I sit, separated only by a pane of glass.
I have fallen completely in love with the Blue Jays.
True, they have quite a reputation, as Harper Lee has been reminding us — with the incomparable Jeff Daniels and the unforgettable Atticus Finch — on the Broadway stage:
“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
Yes, … but as Mark Twain says,
“There’s more to a jay than any other creature. You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure, ’cause he’s got feathers on him and he don’t belong to no church perhaps, but otherwise he’s just as much a human as you and me.”
I find that to be so true of the blue jays — and all the bird folk that have taken up residence in our little plot of green grass, hedges and trees.
They live and love, fight and argue, chatter and sing side by side, swooping through life, soaring on hope and accomplishment, defending and raising their young. Kind of like us.
Finally, this says it right for me today:
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. ~Chinese Proverb