Joshua J. Cotten
My day doesn’t always start with the sound of birds, but when it does, it’s like God calling me outside to throw the frisbee.
God has yet to appear in my front yard. But Rob Brumfield has.
Rob is a former neighbor. Globe flitting ornithologist, university professor, natural museum overseer, father, husband, Rob is a busy man. He makes time to walk his neighborhoods to see what birds he may see, like an oversized Boy Scout Guide.
Finding Rob in the front yard is always a harbinger of a good day. He is what the cheap dime novels called ruggedly handsome: tall, fit, a chap whom women might throw a glance at and men want to shake a hand with.
“Inca doves in your satsuma tree,” he might say off-handedly, though surprised. Like, “Good morning. There are Lithuanians in your camellias.”
My friend Harriett Pooler is a birder. Not a bird watcher. Like all serious amateurs on the verge of going pro, Harriett identifies birds by call as easily as through binoculars.
Our phone conversations sound like this:
“Hey, how you doing? What kind of bird is green and yellow and goes chirrup, chirrup?”
“Where are you?”
It matters not if I’m at Devil’s Swamp landfill or paddling a kayak near shore’s edge at Toledo Bend. Harriett speaks some possibilities into her cell phone, and I choose one.
“Thanks”
“Coffee soon?”
“Sure.”
Writing this, I realize I know more than a few birders. There's Marie Constantin, who does a perfect imitation of a river crow’s call. She makes the sound of the crow inches from my head. I whirl to find Marie smiling. Marie took the famous photograph of Mother Theresa that the Vatican and the Associated Press flashed to the world. For me, her greatest talent is making that wise-ass call of the river crow.
[Read more about photographer Marie Constantin in this profile from our October 2014 issue.]
And the late Murrell Butler. Naturalist. Tunica Hills landowner. Painter of bird portraits.
I made a Christmas bird count with Murrell. That’s not as thrilling as it sounds. There are no presents. No fat man’s jolly laugh. Just grinding, dogged bird call listening that starts at 3 am with a count of owls.
Birders sometimes use a recorded owl sound to coax sleeping owls into making their distinctive call. At 3 am, I not only was unable to distinguish between the recording and the owl—I didn’t care at all.
Near dusk, Murrell heard the flapping sound of the ruby encrusted frog eater, or it could have been a frog-eating, encrusted ruby. He slammed on the brakes of his car. I had begun amusing myself by making up bird names before Murrell could identify them by their songs. He was not amused.
[Read our memoriam on the artist Murrell Butler, here.]
“Come on, get out, so you can hear better,” cried Murrell, diving out of the car.
“I think I’ll see if I can find the Saints game on the radio,” I said.
He gave me the look of the withering warbler.
“Murrell,” I said. “We’ve been at this for fourteen hours. I’ve got what I need for the story—for ten stories.”
Warm under the covers of my bed, I listen to the birds in the yew tree outside the window and think of Rob, Harriett, Marie, and the long-suffering Murrell, and have this deep thought:
If God threw a frisbee, would the spin be right or left? Does God hold a frisbee like the pros do, like a boomerang or a tomahawk? Or does a frisbee thrown by God arrive with no spin, diving and fluttering like a knuckle ball?
If God and I play frisbee, I’ll file an update.
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