Memories of Red-Winged Blackbirds
When I was a kid, (I must have been in the 10- to 12-year-old range), I spent my summers rowing on Paddocks Pond, which was just a quarter of a mile from our house in Harwich Center on Cape Cod. Most kids played ball, and watched TV, (ok, so I did a little of that too), but I was usually out on the pond rowing my little 10’ flat-bottomed aluminum johnboat. I had it pretty good really... I’d rise early, make a sandwich, grab my tackle box and fishing rod, and go. I’d stay there all day just rowing around, fishing, drifting, and listening to and watching the birds. And the one bird I remember most vividly was the red-winged blackbird.
They were everywhere – there must have been hundreds of them... And the racket they made was astounding. (The ending of their song is a sharp, hard trill.) I’d just let the boat drift towards the shrub-scrub that lined the pond and drink it all in.
Today my wife and I own a home just a few hundred yards from the pond. Oh, I’m too old and busy to go to that mud hole now. But there are times when I need a break, and I simply look out the kitchen window and watch my old friends and listen to their songs. And even in this terrible post-9/11 world, that still gives me just a little of that serenity I enjoyed 35 years ago.
See you by the feeder,
Alan