Fiddling with the birds at the pole farm

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

By John Tredrea
   Our cat hates the fiddle. The minute he sees me pick it up, he hops down from the sofa and heads for the door and won’t stop meowing, very loudly, until I let him out. "I was up all night and need to sleep, which I guess I’ll have to do outside," the expression his face says. "I sure can’t abide that atrocious scratching when I’m trying to get some rest."
   I am not a good fiddler, though I have been trying for a while — over 10 years. I take it outside, to remote points, whenever I can, so that I don’t have to worry about bothering anyone but the birds and the bees. It’s one reason I’m always glad to see spring arrive.
   The best place I’ve found so far is at Mercer County Northwest, an 800-acre piece that straddles Lawrence and Hopewell townships. It is a big place — so big the birds seem tame. They’ll fly right at you, talking up a storm, until they’re so close you’ll wonder if they’re going to hit you in the head, and then they veer off at the last minute. At that point, you can practically see the whites of their eyes — if they are white, that is.
   Just east of where two drainage ditches form a big L-shape about a quarter-mile east of Federal City Road is a big field used by a club that flies remote-controlled model airplanes. Most of the times I’ve gone there, no one is around. It was that way Sunday afternoon, when I took the dog and the fiddle. This dog is 14 and pretty deaf, so the fiddle is not an issue with her.
   Standing on this field and looking east on a day when the weather is fair affords one of the best views I’ve ever seen anywhere. The land slopes upward to the east, but not at such a steep grade that it cuts off the sight of the far tree line, many hundreds of yards away. There is forested land to the north and south as well. Behind you, Federal City Road is far enough away that you can barely hear the cars going by. There’s not much traffic on that stretch of it, anyway. Here, the sky looks about 20 times the size it usually does. When it is all or mostly bright blue, it is something else.
   If someone dropped you on this spot and told you it was Tennessee in 1910, you could well believe him, for a little while anyway. Or until the first plane flew overhead.
   On Sunday, I saw the purest red I’ve ever seen. I was scratching away on "Father Dollard’s Favorite," an old Irish jig, and I heard a bird call. Flying through all that blue straight toward me — and straight into the brilliant sun, as it turned out — was the biggest redwing blackbird I’ve even seen. He looked almost as big as a crow and he was really moving. The red spots on his wings were very big and amazingly red, because of how the sun was hitting them from directly behind me. I remember the thought jumping into my mind that I had never seen anything nearly that red before and probably never would again and was lucky to have seen it.
   That may sound corny and maybe it is, but you can’t help what comes into your mind at such moments. At any rate, like a number of other birds I’ve encountered at this spot and others nearby, this one flew right at me, chattering loudly, veering off at the last moment. It felt like he was being sociable, though, of course, I have no way of knowing for sure. Maybe he was actually trying to persuade me to "get lost and for crying out loud take that fiddle with you." Come to think of it, maybe birds do hate bad music. That would figure, seeing what phenomenal singers they are.
   There are a lot of barn swallows out there, too. After all, there are several big old barns along the old dirt road into the place off Federal City Road. I had no idea what kind of birds they were until, one day a few years ago, a woman who lives across the road from the park walked by. I asked her, and she told me what kind of bird they were.
   "Looks like barn swallows know how to enjoy life," I said.
   "They sure do," she replied.
   The tiny swallows seem to travel mostly in small groups. They zoom around like crazy and regularly fly quite close to you, saying something or other. It’s hard to imagine any critter seeming happier or more charismatic. There’s a natural tendency to think of nature in terms of survival of the fittest. This spot seems to have sneaked around that somehow. Not bad.
   There’s a dark side out there, too, sometimes. Some of the biggest hawks, I’ve ever seen. They follow you around, sometimes several of them at a time, circling high overhead. Plainly visible as black shadows are the huge muscles inside their otherwise translucent wings. You find yourself thinking what a spot you’d be in if all those hawks decided to dive bomb you at once. You never hear them make a sound but you sure can feel them looking at you.