Worried About the Bird | Yankee Classic

We’d barely moved into our house when we discovered a bird’s nest perched high on the rear porch, under the eaves. Day after day, as we unpacked, it sat there like a pile of old, shredded wheat. Then one late October afternoon, as I was on my way out the door with one last load of flattened boxes, a head popped up. It looked at me suspiciously, swiveled back and forth a few times, then popped back down again.

My wife and I were delighted. We hadn’t been here long enough to make any friends, we had no pet, no baby yet, and to find that our house sheltered another living thing besides the spiders trapped behind the storm windows and the mice who scurried guiltily at night was the beginning of some vague sense of community. Late every afternoon I could spot that dark dome of a head half hidden behind its semicircle of straw.

It had been a big step for us, moving to the country, and we were suffering our share of uncertainty. My wife and I felt far away from the shelter of what we knew. A friend phoned from the city to tell me how beautiful the leaves were down there in the park, and I had to tell him that up here the last ones had already fallen.

It started getting dark early, and the weather turned cold. One evening, when I looked out to check on the bird, I saw him huddling in his usual place — but all unprotected. The nest had blown off its little ledge, and the mud and straw lay scattered on the wooden planking of the porch.

The porch thermometer read 25 degrees. My wife and I worried about the bird. How could it possibly survive, exposed like that? We felt obligated to do something. She found some skeins of baby-blue yarn, while I cut short strips from the crimson swatch that had come with a catalog for winter underwear.

I switched on the yellow porch light and gently stepped out the door. I picked up the remnants of the nest, smashed out of shape, and stood in the cold, staring up at the bird. Was it dead already?

The bird exploded off its perch without warning and shot off into the trees. Once my heart calmed down, I climbed up on the railing, the wind numbing my hands and the back of my neck, and tucked the nest back into place. To keep it from blowing away, I stuck it to the ledge with some broad plastic tape we had used on our cardboard boxes. Then I added the lengths of cut-up cloth and yarn. I clambered down and stepped back inside, feeling a certain pride at having gone to such lengths to ensure the comfort of our bird.

The bird didn’t come back that night, and we haven’t seen him since. Every time I step out the back door now, the tufts of baby-blue yard and crimson cloth sticking up over the edge of the nest mock me. The bird probably would have been fine. Did I frighten him away? And was it really the bird we were worried about?

Excerpt from “Worried About the Bird,” Yankee Magazine, October 1988.