We built our house the summer after our oldest son was born. Since then, generations of eastern phoebes raised their hatchlings in a nest constructed under our deck by one of their ancestors.
You might know these fly-catching birds for their dark heads, fidgety tail pumps and their “fee-bee” call, which is how they got their name. Each year, a nesting pair raises two, sometimes three clutches before fall arrives.
Phoebes usually live less than ten years, which means that I’ve seen whole bird lifetimes flash by from my soft chair. A gap between the deck boards lets us peer into the nest to observe a pulsing mass of small chicks, each vying to prove to their mother that they are the hungriest. Every year, more chicks. Their mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers always fed them enough — so many flies, it staggers the mind.
Soon, very soon, little birds hop around the grass, flap madly, and land awkwardly on the fence post. You wonder how they can survive. But in a day, maybe less, these chicks fly figure eights, snatching flies on the wing. Not chicks anymore. Sometimes they hit the window screens in their exuberance, but learn quickly.
Next spring, we see a phoebe on the deck rail. One of last year’s parents? Or one of their offspring? No way to know for sure, but the passage of 19 years requires that the generational handoff happened more than once, perhaps many times by now. These birds live in a nest built by a ghost, tended by ghosts, bequeathed to their parents — a mystery to them, and yet all they’ve ever known.
We left our oldest son at college last week. He’s in another state, though still well within the breeding grounds of the eastern phoebe. One of our twin sons started community college. His brother just applied for technical training for the fall after he graduates high school.
Memories take wing. Blobby little babies, too weak to sit up. Scraped knees and bleeding face wounds. Loud car trips and so many questions. We answered them as best we could, making up what we did not know, just as our parents did. And now, one by one, they fly.
I don’t imagine that all the little phoebes make it in the end. Hawks nest in the woods behind the garage. Murderous blue jays test the vigilance of every mother phoebe. Freak cold fronts plunge jet streams into a deep freeze, casting waves of migrating birds to the ground like hailstones. Nothing in nature is guaranteed, except that it will all continue with emotionless symmetry well beyond a bird’s lifetime, and ours.
Time has a rhythm that becomes clearer with age. You rely less on what people tell you is coming. All you need is a sniff of air or a glimpse of light crossing the room. People call it wisdom, but animals figure this much faster than we do.
Birds fly because it’s time to fly. What else would you have them do? Stop being so emotional. But when the house is quiet, sometimes people cry because it’s time to cry.
As humans, we’re granted the privilege of seeing the clockwork. We know how it ends, and how it begins again. This gift, like many gifts, is also a curse. But our knowledge, incomplete as it is, gives way to animal yearning.
I hope they fly home when the weather changes.
Aaron J. Brown is an author and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He writes the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and co-hosts the podcast “Power in the Wilderness” on Northern Community Radio. This piece first appeared in the Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024 edition of the Mesabi Tribune.
Beautifully stated and poignantly put, as usual.
One of your best. Well done Aaron.