Learning, or more appropriately, perhaps, “awareness” is the better word, is usually a gradual, inch by inch process, building and building to finally get there as a shape you can put your mind around. Usually, that’s how it works, but sometimes it comes like a shooting star from outer space or, on occasion, as something more benign. Yesterday, there was a striking example of the latter, for me, involving a Nam Doc Mai mango tree growing in the yard where Annette and I live in Oleander Gardens. It’s not a huge property, but significant enough to contain several happy fruit trees – ackee, sapodilla, mango, bread fruit, golden apple – which inevitably means a collection of the birds we are blessed to have in Guyana. The Nam Doc mango, more or less at the front of the yard, has become home to a Kiskdaee mother who built a nest, completely unknown to us, in the lower branches of the tree with a random collection of narrow twigs and other plant material. Amazingly, the nest was completely invisible to us. We only got wind of it, when this bright yellow bird, came soaring out of the tree and dive bombed our Pit Bull Peppa who inadvertently came too close to it in her roaming. Mother Kis gave me one of her flash by warnings, which is what actually led to my discovering her nest, and then parked in the upper branches of another tree clearly waiting in case another warning was needed. Others from the household got similar warnings out in the yard from Mother Kis who was on guard duty somewhere completely invisible to us.
The astonishing thing was the degree of attack that this small bird, no bigger than my hand, could generate without actually striking anybody, coming in at high speed and passing only a few inches to left or right, three feet from the ground, and then soaring almost straight up to alight overhead at the top of the adjacent ackee tree continuing to check on what’s happening below. Purely from the physical aspects involved, a stellar performance.
Reflecting on it afterwards, with the perched kiskadee, yellow breast shining like a beacon, standing guard, I was struck by the incongruity of me, a six-foot tall creature, of medium weight, being held at bay by this tiny bird, smaller than my hand, with no weapon to use on me, compared to what I could launch at her, and here was Mother Kis, ready to come again and again with her attack, despite the obvious disadvantage in size and weight and the available weapons in my favour. How is it that, overall, in whichever country one lives, mankind has this clear upper hand over all of God’s creatures, and yet, somehow, they survive the attacks and keep coming back with their own assault? I found myself almost applauding this solitary bird, no family or offspring anywhere in sight, in this ferocious assault, putting her at great risk. What force is it in the universe, residing in this graceful, beautiful creature, her yellow body shining her defiance, that sends her with no hesitation on this mission – the only one she knows; the only one. In a way, whether one gives any thought to the concept of a Deity ruling the universe, that tiny yellow bird, with her only weapon being a frail piece of grass, is shouting at us the existence of a higher order, operating in the globe called Earth, and producing somehow a balance in that totally uneven clash. So we have the simple, tiny Kiskadee, leaving a life question that my supposedly superior mind cannot explain. Such was precisely the thought that passed through my mind as I watched this small yellow creature, turning above my head and preparing for another diving attack on me and our pitbull Peppa below; a sterling lesson from a bird smaller than my hand. As the old Guyanese refrain reminds us. “What are us? Us are dust.”
