I have not retained a whole lot from my childhood. Maybe it's because I was undiagnosed ADHD. I also think it might be the result of being from a broken home. Going back and forth each week between two households hindered continuity. Many of the things that I do remember are murky. But they're in there, and they pop up from the depths of my brain from time to time.
One day I was chilling in my car in the parking lot of Bert's Market on Folly Beach, enjoying my then-favorite snack: Cool Ranch Doritos, Jack Link's teriyaki beef stick, and a Dr. Pepper. I don't think I was feeding the birds, but many birds were scavenging in the parking lot, brown birds I had seen a million times but whose species I couldn't identify. And then suddenly I said, "Those are grackles." When I got home and looked them up that's exactly what they were. I don't know where the name came from, but it was clearly in there somewhere from my past. (I call this sort of experience "mental archaeology.")
Around this time I was seeing a woman in an ill-fated relationship based primarily on a mutual fondness for marijuana and sex. One afternoon, in the afterglow of a particularly satisfying assignation, we lay on the bed in silence with nothing but birdsong audible, wafting in through the windows. It sounded like a bunch of different birds, each with its own distinctive call, but the more I listened, the more I began to sense that it was only one bird, and I figured it had to be a mockingbird.
Obviously, I had heard of the mockingbird, but to my mind this was the first time I'd ever really heard one singing. When I got home and looked up "mockingbird" in my trusty Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (this was in the early ohs, before I owned a computer, much less a smartphone), the entry sounded like it was addressed directly to me: "The mockingbird, the preeminent North American songbird, may mimic some 30 calls in succession, Ned."
The mockingbird quickly became my favorite bird. I especially liked its Linnaean nomenclature: Mimus polyglottos, which sounded like a fake name coined by Chuck Jones. I found this name in a bird book I bought to support my newfound interest. There were a bunch of birds in this book that I hoped to see one day: the red-winged blackbird, the indigo bunting, the painted bunting, the Eastern bluebird, the American kestrel, and the cedar waxwing.
One day, while giving a carriage tour, I was stopped before a house on Limehouse Street when a slew of birds swooped in and alit on a holly tree full of berries, then just as quickly swooped away. I recognized the cedar waxwing from my book and I was ecstatic. "Oh, my god," I said to my bewildered passengers, "cedar waxwings! I've been hoping to see those for forever!"
The other morning I went out to my car to find it absolutely plastered with bird droppings. I have parked in the same spot since I moved to my new apartment, underneath a tall deciduous tree of uncertain species where birds sometimes perch. There has been the occasional dropping, but nothing like this. When I got home later that day, I saw scores of cedar waxwings swooping back and forth between the big tree and the two holly trees that front my apartment building. (When I first moved here and saw the holly trees, I wondered if I would see cedar waxwings.) This was the first time I'd seen them since that day on Limehouse Street, and I watched them at intervals all afternoon from my balcony. They are gorgeous birds: a smooth back and red tips on the wings that resemble wax (hence the name); yellow belly; crested head with a black mask; and a bright yellow marking on the very tip of the tail. They must be in the process of migrating. I wonder how long they'll be here.
