Backyard Birds

Backyard Birds

A store clerk, Daphne Brown filled shelves each day. One day blended into the next with customers coming and going through the store. There were customers who walked up and down the aisles rather aimlessly, pausing every now and then to pick up an item, put it back, pick it up again, put it back and finally walk away.  There were moms, with kids in tow, who just wanted to get what was on their list and get home. Some kids were so ready to be done with mom’s shopping and there were others sound asleep in mom’s tired arms. Then there was the old fellow who knew all about the store’s products and spun tales of his years gardening and how this store was the only one where he would spend his money.

At the end of her busy days, Daphne would return to her lovely home shared with her husband, Jim. She loved to sit out on the patio in the sun and read, her eyes shaded by a big floppy hat and sunglasses. She would check the bird feeders hung throughout the yard before settling with her glass of tea. In the winter time, bird feeders, for the hardy winter birds, were checked and filled even before she went into the house. On those cold snowy days, she sat in her glassed in porch, warmed by the western sun.

Gathering her ‘reading material’, her book with it’s lovely bookmark and her fresh coffee, she sat  down to read for a bit before Jim got home. Supper was out tonight, so there were no worries about any preparations. The book mark, a gift from a friend in New Zealand, made her stop and think about all the beautiful and different birds in the world. The two featured on the book mark were a Tui and a Fantail, both very interesting looking birds with fascinating names. Their stories would be interesting, and their charming names could be suited to a children’s story.  Sharing their whistles, cheets and chirps throughout New Zealand forests, gardens and parks, Tui and Fantail were both songbirds. Songbirds, species vulnerable to humankind's need to ‘fix’ the environment. Silent Spring, the book Daphne was reading, was written in 1962 and had become much more intriguing. Daphne had a renewed focus for the birds in her own back yard and, of course, the Tui birds and Fantail birds.

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities

 of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

~ Rachel Carson