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Warbler, elegant in yellow, dark olive green and jet black, had perched on a twig and let the water soak his plumage. There were others: a White-eyed Vireo, Kentucky Warblers, Indigo Bunting, Summer Tanager and a very beautiful male Magnolia Warbler. A succession of birds kept me tensely focused and exhilarated with excitement. The picture of the Magnolia Warbler came close to my strict ideas of perfection: it shows water on his back with one drop on the twig near his perch.
Another bird arrived and sat on a twig, silently contemplating the water. It was heavily streaked underneath and superficially like a Song Sparrow, though the streaks were not gathered into one da/-k spot as they are in that familiar bird. The snap of the shutter had not disturbed other birds but the streaked, buffy breasted bird flew away when I took the picture.
I left the blind and went inside the home of my friend, who, knowing of my passion to photograph birds, had alerted me to the birds drawn to the sprinkler in her yard. Quickly I leafed through her copy of Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds of Texas, found the plates of sparrows and identified the bird I had just photographed: a Lincoln’s Sparrow.
Rare in the east, more likely to be encountered in the Midwest during migration, the Lincoln’s Sparrow breeds near the arctic circle and winters in thickets of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas and far into Mexico.
Malls are not always places of death for birds. On the day after finding the dead sparrow, I was again at a shopping mall: the Gateway Plaza in Front Royal. As we walked to the car, Lee said: “I hear a Killdeer!” The wild cry came from high in a cloudless blue sky filled with light. Finally I saw the plover, its long pointed wings silvery in the light of the setting sun. ,The wild cry, kill-DEE, killDEE, floated down as the bird circled the mall. Finally it flew away and disappeared over the mountains. The defiant cry grew faint with distance. I was left with the memory of a bird wild, free and intense with life.
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