As the Meadowlark Warbles

For me, if I don’t hear a meadowlark out at the vineyard, it’s not complete. I don’t know why that song has come to signify the “being” of me there, but it has. Thankfully I hear one every time. And then I wonder, is it the same one? Do we have a resident meadowlark like our resident kestrels?

We were at the farm just the other day, Wednesday. Scott was showing around a city-slicker NYC friend, to whom I had loaned a fleece and hat because she had left NY in balmy weather, only to find a spring Oregon chill. Sam and I were checking for owl poop, I mean, pellets, under the owl houses that stand some 10? 12? feet above the trellis poles, attached to them by long screws and bolts. Sam carefully grabbing onto the vines as he hauled his growing little legs over the lower wire. Scott noticed and called out, “Make sure he doesn’t knock off any buds,” which I was already doing, of course, imagining where next year’s fruit canes might come from.

We headed toward the boxy house, white markings along its face, dropped by birds surveying from its roof. I really wanted to find a pellet. Wanted to find the little mass and pull it open with a vine’s cut spear that still dotted the rows from this year’s pruning, and see the bones and detritus that it might contain, stuff you learn in 10th grade biology, or from your crazy bird-mother… But there were none to be found. Only a quick rustling of feathers as we approached, and then a blur of wings as it left its hole. Was it an owl? (It would have to be a small one.) Was it a kestrel taking over a larger home? (The kestrel homes are more an rectangular upright, this was a horizontal positioning.) I don’t which bird it was, but I only knew it was there, and it left in a hurry, with Sam trying his best to keep upright, his face all rosy from the cold, and wind, stepping over the wire, and not far away  atop another pole, the meadowlark let loose.