Echoes in white noise

When I was in my late teens, I had a boyfriend whose family had worked at the Northern California Renaissance Faire every summer for years. I joined them for a couple of years, spending time at their feather fan shop or braiding ribbons at their friend Julia’s velvet-bag shop, wandering the dusty trails, sipping spicy iced chai or savoring waffles and ice cream.

The event wasn’t exceptionally loud, but it provided a steady hum of voices — people talking and singing — as well as medieval bands and musicians playing their instruments as they ambled up and down the paths. Each weekend, I would come home and soak in a long bath to wash off the dust, sweat, fire retardant and anything else my body had accumulated after two days in the dry California oak woodland. And, as the warm water rumbled and filled the tub, I thought I could hear the murmur of voices and the sound of pipes and flutes amid the white noise.

I was amused to hear these ghosts of the weekend, and often leaned in to hear conversations and melodies that weren’t quite there.

This past weekend, I rented a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains — a place that often feels haunted to me, after experiences I had there 20 years ago. After more than a year being at home with my partner and kiddo, I needed some extended time alone. I love them dearly, but I was wiped out from the lack of solitude. (In a recent interview with the Pleasure Mechanics, author Emily Nagoski described her similar situation as like being tied to a chair and force-fed chocolate.)

The house was surrounded on all sides by redwood trees — which was one of its major selling points for me. The whole weekend, ravens flitted from tree to tree throughout the canyon, cawing and cackling and croaking at each other. The only time it got a little too loud was when one of them hopped around on the flat roof over my head, cawing its head off.

When I came home yesterday afternoon, I rested in bed with a portable fan blowing cool air across my skin, and I could hear the echoes of the ravens’ calls. They were faint but unmistakable above the hum of the fan, an artifact of my brain subconsciously dancing along a weekend of raven-song. I hadn’t thought about that phenomena in a long time, and it made me smile.

Like Herb Caen, But Birds

A few days ago, I glanced into my backyard garden and saw a large, dark shape under the bird feeders. At first I thought maybe it was one of the neighborhood skunks, but quickly realized it was one of the neighborhood ravens instead.

Normally I see them hanging out on the utility wires in front of our house, or in various trees throughout the area, including the large Monterey cypress in our neighbors’ backyard. Sometimes I will put peanuts out on the stoop for them and watch as they greedily fly off with a nut in their beak, cawing to let their clan know there are peanuts available. I hear them chatting in the treetops, and their wingbeats as they fly by, but I’ve never seen one land in our yard before.

But there it was, casually eating birdseed from a bowl we’ve left on the ground for squirrels and doves (squirrels have destroyed four of our bird feeders in the past several months; don’t @ me). Despite how massive the raven was compared to the doves, let alone any of the other birds, it didn’t try to scare or intimidate any of them. We have pigeons who charge at other birds, finches who fight for the best feeder perch, and scrub jays who scream at everybody. But this raven was calm, enjoying a snack and a drink of water before it flew off to wherever it calls home.

I read somewhere a few years back that the screechy warning sounds made by scrub jays, squirrels and some other birds are a semi-common language of distress calls. Unfortunately, I can’t find it now, but it’s true that birds have networks to warn one another of predators (including us humans). We hear these pretty often in our neighborhood, whether it’s a warning about humans, a backyard cat, a tussle between jays and squirrels, or the occasional Cooper’s hawk that hangs out in the cypress tree or other spots nearby. Bird and mammal languages are often so species-specific, so it’s pretty cool that they have ways of communicating across those differences.

Speaking of hawks, I occasionally find a “pellet” cast off by one of the hawks, which they drop down from the cypress into our backyard. These pellets are mostly composed of fur, feathers and a collection of small bones (my kid loves to dissect them). We don’t mind having the hawks around, partly because they keep the rodent population in check. Our cat is a hopeless hunter. She’s black and white, so she can’t really hide. She’s too slow. And, while she does catch the occasional mouse or juvenile rat, she lacks any killing instinct and is prone to bringing rodents inside and losing them under the stove.

A couple of weeks ago she caught a slow-moving, ill-seeming young rat that was eating some of the scattered birdseed in our yard. Our cat caught and played with it, but I kept her from bringing it inside. Once the rat got away from her, I brought her in and made sure she couldn’t get back out. But the rat ill-advisedly ventured forth and was discovered by a passing scrub jay, which attacked and killed it — but didn’t eat it, either. We’re glad the city takes meat in its compost collection.

I’ve saved the most adorable tidbit for last: I love watching birds feed each other. Once in a while, we’ll see a chickadee, junco or some other bird fly to the feeders, pick up a bit of food, and take it to another bird of the same species waiting nearby. It’s called “allofeeding,” and it’s sometimes done by adults feeding their juveniles, and sometimes it’s courtship behavior. Either way, it’s incredibly cute. The black-capped chickadees have a unique song associated with allofeeding, and I get excited every time I hear it.