For the Birds
Spring is springing, for which I am eternally grateful. I enjoy taking walks around my neighborhood, spotting the occasional one-off bunch of flowers or bright green blades of grass shooting up from the cold ground. While above, trees are starting to bud, their naked branches tinged with color and texture promising happier, longer, warmer days ahead. And completing my early spring explorations is the omnipresent choir of birds, boisterous and fervent, heralding the change in season.
McCarren Park, Williamsburg, 📸 March 2025
In addition to tree-lined streets, there’s quite a bit of unseen backyard nature in my neighborhood. Behind my building is an impressive growth of spruces and pines, my very own little woody respite from my fire escape. New York City is deceptive like that. I’m not saying it’s the fucking Catskills, but there is a lot more green than meets the eye, at least in Williamsburg.
So we have birds—lots of them. Lots of different species. Lots of different songs. Some mornings are a goddamn cacophony, enough to wonder if all living things are collectively coming unglued, in rage and in mourning, as the earth melts, as we carpet bomb the cradle of civilization, as we turn our backs on the suffering and unlucky.
Backyard bird friends, 📸 March 2019
Speaking of rage, mourning, and birds, my mornings have been deprived of any pleasant springtime twittering thanks to the ongoing construction wrapping my block. With a hideously impressive 7am on-the-dot start-time—incredulously permitted—incessant drilling, pounding, scraping, and roaring engines have supplanted all peace. (See? Not the Catskills.)
Every now and then there is the sporadic half minute or so-long lull, as some aspect of the ear-splitting work is paused for whatever reason, when I briefly hear my feathered friends’ wild, sweet chirping.
For the birds do not give a shit about construction; they defiantly sing through it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Perhaps it’s the ability to traverse the chaos and commotion that’s completely out of our control with grace, courage, and conviction. I see us all trying, but it’s not enough.