The Backyard Bird Chronicles
This winter I discovered many backyard Maine birds in Menlo Park, CA, where Amy Tan resides in the nearby San Francisco Bay Area. Her Joy Luck Club was a popular first novel with many beach goers on Little Lake Sebago way back in 1989.
It is a wonder that Tan took up serious drawing lessons in her 60s and published this bird book of her beautiful drawings with handwritten stories, too. Yes, she imagines what her backyard birds are doing and thinking and even noticing her through the glass windows.
Just check out the thrushes, which I hear in the deep Maine woods singing their song and the vireo’s cylindrical harmonized song. Maybe we do not catch sight of these tiny songbirds, but Mainers certainly hear them. Up by the Girls Camp Runioa horse field in the woods or on Point Road early in the day or late as the sun sets.
Hummingbirds bop around fast from flower to flower in California and Maine. Sometimes I only hear their buzzing tiny wings and maybe see their shadow as they dart from bloom to bloom quickly and are gone.
Crows, jays, and ravens; pigeons, doves and the mourning dove softly cooing can be heard; goldfinch, nuthatches climbing up and down tall pines; sparrows, junkos, warblers and woodpeckers! Oh my, on and on! Hope your metal gutters do not have that noisy woodpecker awakening you too early in the day.…
Vultures, hawks, and owls, yes, but I could not find our Great Pond bald eagles in Amy’s beautiful bird observations. Ospreys also entertain us when we canoe too close to their nests and both Mom and Pop Osprey surely let you know. Their swooping warnings are dramatic.… Maybe Amy’s home is too far from the bay to have what we have everyday on Great Pond and the winding chain of the Belgrade Lakes.
Enjoy this treat of an artistic bird book, but more importantly enjoy our outdoor bird sanctuary right here. Get out your binoculars and then hop in a boat for more bird ventures. I was so very amazed to see how ospreys fought the bigger bird in the sky for its catch from the lake near Oak Island. Those ospreys are certainly doting parents for their little ones, stealing a catch from a bigger bird’s claws.
Even out on an island, you can hear the ospreys protecting their young from boaters too close for comfort. Loons too are Maine’s special birds. How could I forget them?
Amy Tan is invited to travel to Maine for more bird studies and to the coast for puffins. I bet she would love it. And many readers in Maine have enjoyed her novels since 1989, such as The Bonesetter’s Daughter and other award winning works. Her mother’s immigrant story is heartbreaking and Amy’s newly found half sisters in China makes one think.
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