pass the jelly
by bam
“psst,” i can hear them saying, nudging with their wings, “down there,” now pointing with their beaks. “dive-bomb,” one whispers to another. “take a hit. the lady’s cracked open the jelly and the oranges. and not just any jelly, pal. she went for smucker’s. dang.”
it’s pay day for the orioles. the baltimore orioles. and, nope, not the men who run in circles, swing at flying balls, get paid more than you and i will probably ever see.
i mean, of course, the orange ball of feathers that will make you gasp, will make you rouse the children, rouse the dead most likely, when you see one settling down at the oranges and the jelly you’ve left out for them, your diner always open.
the class today, as promised some time back, is migration 101. we are learning together, you and i, so i promise not to get too over-your-head. only so much as to make you swoon, like i am. i am in full swoon over here.
this here, from just the other day ‘til end of may, then trickling into june, is the thickest of the thick.
these are the days when birds are crowding in the clouds, nudging, budging, making way to make their northern nests and spend the summers lolling in the shady woods. sort of like you, perhaps, headed off to your northwoods cabin, except without the fishing poles and the bug spray.
the first, best thing you need, should you decide that swooping orangeballs will set you right this spring, is rather straightforward.
one quick trip to the grocery should do it. you can leave the kiddies in the car, if they’re not of an age that would leave you under lock and key, behind bars, making your quick trip to the grocery not so quick after all.
you’ll dash for just two goodies: a bag of oranges, any sort will do. just so they’re orange, and not greenish-orange. no self-respecting oriole will go for orange of other color.
next, please, traipse (skipping works fine, too, try skipping through the grocery, see what happens when you skip) to the jelly aisle. there, you will pass over all the other concord grape concoctions, you will settle only–finicky, yes, but this is for the orioles, after all–for the smucker’s.
in birdie circles (which we now are in), smucker’s is the whispered, venerated brand for which there is no substitute.
it is, plainly, the opiate of the orioles, if you really want to know. which of course you do.
“the birds go nuts,” says our old friend t.j. , the bird man, the one who teaches much. “some people swear by smucker’s. isn’t that ridiculous?”
to think a beaked thing would be so discriminating. perhaps they ptu-ptu the lesser grapes, spit out mere mortal brands.
but enough with all this high-brow jelly. what you want to do is tuck it into little jelly cups–yes, you read that right–for your little flying friends. pyrex works well, says t.j. and i’m sure they wouldn’t turn up their beaks at spode.
next, slice oranges. leave them on the ground, or lying on your fire escape. if you want to get ahead of the class you could pound a long nail through a 2-by-4, and impale the juicy half. this little trick keeps the ol’ greedy squirrels from making off with your navel. oh my.
in case you wondered: not only are your oranges there for all their juice, they are there as can’t-miss-from-the-clouds fruity billboards, backyard beacons to the sky.
as all the winged things are flap-flap-flapping on their birdie byway, en route, say, from the andes mountains or the yucatan, they’ll zero in on flash of orange and come diving from on high. sort of like the “open” sign flapping on the diner door.
the one last thing you want to make absolutely sure you always have enough of in these dry migration days is water, water, water. can’t have enough. the little birds, just think, have been flapping for miles and miles and miles and their little birdie throats are rather parched, to say the least.
so those, my fine-footed friends, are the to-do’s on your bring-on-the-birds migration list.
here is the why, here is where i swoon:
far far away, in thick jungles and tropical forests, the light of spring begins to change. the days are longer. the light, brighter.
little molecules of light, it seems, poing a little spot in the back of the birds’ brains. that spot, a switch, then lets loose a surge. their little bodies are filled, are flooded, with hormones that tell the birds: go north. build nest. get yourself back to where you and your mama and your mama’s mama once hatched.
and so, at nightfall, when winds are calm, when predators are few, when air is cooler and thus less dehydrating, the winged things take flight. sometimes by the tens and tens of thousands. often, they catch the updraft of a warm front, and come wafting in on southerly winds. no fools, they don’t flutter upstream, like those silly salmon.
my friend t.j. tells me that, true to the book, night before last, whole swarms came in, came in on the warm front that made us wake up without need for sweaters.
and, thus, when my mama called first thing to say. “the warblers arrived overnight,” she was right. my mama who knows the birds the way she knows her breathing, she woke up and knew the warblers came.
time-out to connect a dot: our rabbi, when asked, but how do you know there’s a God if you can’t see God, always comes back with this simple question, have you ever seen the wind?
all the warblers floating in on the warm front makes me think that one night, every may, the answer to that question is, yes, i saw the wind the night the golden-throated warblers, by the thousands, blew in.
t.j. tells me the birds will fly six to eight hours at a stretch, through the night. some birds will burn a quarter of their body fat in a single night.
as night gives way to daylight, as the first scattered rays of sunbeam peek over the horizon, the birds, exhausted, parched, famished, begin their dawn descent.
they look for sumptuous plots of land, a cherry tree frothed in its springtime meringue, an old dead river birch where bugs by the billions will make for a bottomless all-you-can-eat buffet.
they settle into limbs, nod off in birdie naps. but, mostly, intently, they inhale the fuel they need to flap again. for some, this is the byway’s end. your backyard might be their summer cabin. for others, there are miles to go before they finish flapping.
they’ll look for water. and oranges. and if they hit the jelly jackpot, little pyrex cups of smucker’s concord grape jelly.
indeed, it’s thick out there these days. so thick, and so raucous with all the birdsong, crazy people like t.j. and my mama, and now me, can’t get anything done.
we here along lake michigan–and that’s all of chicago–are smack dab in the fast lane of the flyway that stretches from south america to near the north pole. there are four main flyways through the united states: the atlantic, the pacific, the mississippi (that’s us) and the central, which is midway between the mississippi and pacific.
you can actually trace where we are in the migration by what birds are landing in your yard. the day the orioles and rose-breasted grosbeaks roll in, you know the great migration has begun. for the next three weeks the trees will be alive with bouncing, bopping birds. the air, dense with flitting, flapping, blue jay swooping, warbler darting.
but best of all, just stand outside and listen. in fact, you needn’t even go outside. just stand still. just listen.
it is the season for keeping open all the doors and windows.
there is the sound of heaven right within your reach. and it will come winging to you for just a little jelly spooned into a cup.
all the more sweetly if you make it smucker’s.
class dismissed. any questions?
p.s. thanks for putting up with my bird-brained madness.
how magnificent. but has anyone asked if they’d like a bit of concord grape wine in the spode cups????????????
holy lord! it worked. it worked. i am flapping wings. at 11:05 central standard time, a flash of orange, bright orange, fire-ball orange, took off and darted past my window. it had been beak-deep in smucker’s. i put out the smucker’s at 5:55 last eve. that means in 17 hours, 10 minutes (and who knows if i missed an earlier descent), my fancy jelly worked. it brought the oriole down from the heavens. i’m telling you people, storm the aisles. the jelly aisles. my birdie diner is aswarm. kaleidoscopic tye-dyed color: electric yellow, rose and red and orange. goldfinch, grosbeak, cardinal, oriole. how in the world is a girl supposed to get a darn thing done…….
Interesting jelly tip! Will set some out ASAP, or after the downpour eases. Not sure if it’s actually Smucker’s, perhaps Trader Ginnotto’s or somesuch. Wonder, might orange marmalade work? Over here in the Great Black Swamp we spied our first oriole, like you said, just as the temps started to rise from the 50s/60s to high 70s early in the week. After a few days in the 70s and 80s tree leaves are getting so thick we can hardly glimpse the sky anymore, let alone the birds up in the canopy. But we sure can hear their sounds — songs bounce around every which way. And the sound of flickers pecking, hopefully gourging on that pesky emerald ash borer that’s mauled over 15M trees in SE Mich and NW Ohio.Here where the Eastern hardwood forests give way to the Western prairies (aka the Oak Openings Region), we’re lucky to sit on both the eastern edge of the mississippi flyway and the western edge of the atlantic flyway. I’m not one of those nutty birders who keeps a life list or dreams of a big year with 700+ species spotted, but it sure seems like a good spot to sit a watch what might pass by. Wonder where the local equivalent of Chicago’s “magic hedge” might be???Now that you’ve got the birding bug, don’t hesitate to check:http://home.xnet.com/~ugeiser/Birds/ChicagoRBA.htmlto see what interesting sightings folks are noting.
Ohh, to have a yard with trees, what a gift. For this post-graduate student with an apartment, but not fully settled into an abode yet, I appreciate your vibrant images of all of these birds.I am reminded of a quote from the documentary “winged migration.” In it, the narrator defined migration as the promise to return. What an amazing promise. Thanks for reminding me to look up and out, even if I don’t have a yard. As I run along the lake later today, I will be eagerly anticipating the promise to return. As I wait with patience for a year of long-distance dating to come to a close at the end of July and have my sweetie back in Chicago where there will be dating without a 5 hour delay between my doorstep and his, I too am filled with hope of the promise to return, the migration of love.Also, yesterday while running along the lake, I was overcome by other flying friends… all of the amazing varieties of butterflies. May these winged wonders grace all of your paths today too.
Jelly may be wonderful, but in my yard they go to the hummingbird feeders more than the hummers do. The first scarlet tanager was in the trees this a.m., , plus many more warblers. We should all just lie in the grass and look up!!!
Having just relocated a family of 7 racoons (Ma, Pa, and 5 babes) out of our family room ceiling crawlspace – I am a bit wary of setting up a buffet in my backyard…..I would love to try this however. Have you had any other critters trying a dine and dash? Inquiring minds would like to know.
ah yes, the ol’ critter-in-the-attic antics. been there. done that. although yours sounds like a wholesale migration to the seventh power. may the “promise to return” not hold true in the case of you and your coons. given those gulping circumstances i would quickly note that my jelly and oranges are suspended, actually, hanging from the feeder contraption i got for my half-century birthday. this latest addition is a ring, metal, with aforementioned screws/nails, onto which the orange half is impaled. then, ever so thoughtfully, the wild birds unlimited folks (www.wbu.com) created a little ring within the ring that the glass jelly cup slips into. the whole gizmo is listed at $17.99, but there is a mother’s day sale going on, so i am pretty sure it was a few dollars cheaper. i got mine from lovely t.j., otherwise known as tim joyce, at the glenview wild birds unlimited shop, which is the closest one to the city. my old favorite birder shop, upstart crow in evanston, is no longer…..t.j. is priceless. so is the sight of the orange fireball of feathers……so sorry for your raccoon troubles. but, oh, i’ll bet those babes were nearly irresistible. note the nearly……
slj, if I can figure out a squirrel-proof, raccoon-proof way to rig up those oranges, while keeping the migrators safe from the evil cats in the two neighboring yards (maybe the little device used by bam?), you can come on over and watch the show. Our yard and the neighbors’ (very skinny Hyde Park yards) are full of trees, old huge ones.lamcal, I’m sorry to hear about the raccoons, as bam says, been there, done that, and now we live with squirrels. Last summer we had one of those terrible services that trap rogue wildlife cart away (“yes, honey, I’m sure they’re taking them to the woods”) raccoons and possums over several weeks. But I hope they don’t return for oranges. I’ve been viewing teeny yellow birds far over my head in the trees, which I’m told are warblers or goldfinches by a birder friend, oh so cute. I would love for them–and their friends–to come closer, and further distract me from my laundry.
A MUST for this Mother’s Day for all you bird fans: A set of binoculars. You will not believe how amazing birds really are until you can see them up close and personal without scaring them away.
ahhh jcv, your generosity in sharing your limbs and your little finches (that’s what those bright yellow babies are…..is it not electric yellow?) with slj is unparalleled. it’s why we love you. if you figure out a way to rig up some ‘coon-safe, squirrel-proof contraption (i’m sure you and mr. G could figure out something……..) i will personally supply the smucker’s. while i’m at it, i could toss in vpk’s suggestion of some manishewitz concord wine, and at sundown we could have a little kosher grapefest. i think we could make enough of a racket to scare away those evil cats. now i’d best toddle off to bed. i’ve got orioles to feed in the morning. i just heard they take toast with their jelly. and little napkins to wipe their messy beaks.
jcv, I too am a hyde parker and have come to know the racoons in our fair neighborhood reminding us that the woods is much closer than we think. If the coons bother to listen to you, you might suggest a vacation to jackson park, where they can play between the lagoons and the japanese garden.
aaack! A slain bird in my yard JUST this morning, found, of course, by my littlest (who has been spinning a new story, a sort of animal action-adventure yarn, all day ever since about how the bird didn’t get eaten by the cat after all). Makes me rethink my plan…..
Oh man, I love this. My yard’s gonna be a meeting place!Thank you.