While sitting at my desk in the library this afternoon, I heard a squeaking sound from just outside the slightly opened window. Deep within the barberry bush that grows there was a Bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) busily foraging amongst the thorny branches and sounding for all the world like a small squeeze toy.

My wife has many times suggested that we remove this bush, which she has named “the thorn bush from hell” due to its formidable array of wound inflicting barbs. Yet it is this very quality of the bush that I like in the location it grows due to its being a perfect refuge for the various small birds that spend considerable time foraging within it and there safely protected from our neighbor’s (insert your favorite expletive here) orange cat. The birds seem completely unharmed and unbothered by the thorns, and I quite like having them just outside the window by my desk, hence the bush has remained.

So the Bushtit kept on foraging and squeaking, occasionally breaking into a more melodious song, yet all the while strangely alone. At first it didn’t strike me but after a while I began to wonder why no other Bushtits were coming to join it. Being a highly gregarious species, I am far more accustomed to seeing them in flocks. I have read that one of their feeding techniques is calling to one another and working as a team to locate and exploit whatever source of food is found. Yet call as it might, the solitary Bushtit did not attract the attention of any others of his species. Perhaps most poignant from my observations of this little Bushtit was its occasional rising to the uppermost branches of the bush to give a loud call and look about, as if awaiting a distant return call from another that never arrives. I wondered if its name was Vladamir or Estragon?

There are a number of poetic inferences that can be drawn from this observation – mostly melancholy in tone and perhaps better left for the reader to ponder alone as best reflects on his or her own experiences. Suffice it for my own part to write that it is indeed heartbreaking when something good has been discovered and all efforts are made to tell others of it yet none accept the call and the discoverer is left alone among riches. Such was the state of the Bushtit. Such is the existence of all too many others in the world.

In time the Bushtit moved on to another location. Perhaps it tired of waiting. Perhaps it had simply eaten its fill. Whatever the reason, I was left on my own, listening only to the wind blowing through the empty barberry bush branches. Fortunately I noticed that it was getting close to school being dismissed so I went to pick up our daughter.

Peace and good bird watching.