Two Deaths Each Year

I am a killer.

 

During the span of an average year, I am responsible (in some fashion) for the death of at least two songbirds.  Two days ago, the second of my victims for this year, a Townsend’s solitaire, struck my bay window at full flight speed and instantly perished.

I heard the thud of impact while standing in my kitchen and ran outside to find the solitaire crumpled in blue grama grass alongside recently shed leaves from my linden tree.

I suspect this may be the same bird that overwintered near my house last year.  The solitaire fed on the abundant supply of juniper berries and occasionally perched on my rain gutters to catch winter sun.

My typical mode of dispensing death to songbirds is by means of striking them with my car or truck.  Earlier this year, I mowed down a flightless robin walking across the highway.  I could not avoid the bird due to oncoming traffic.  Last year, I struck one LBJ (little brown job of unknown identity) with my car and one swallow with my truck.

I know.  Just a bird.  But I have grown extraordinarily averse to unnecessary death in my evolving age.  I suffer a little with each loss.  Soon, I start to imagine that every other adult I know shares this same gray statistic of allotting death to songbirds.

Two birds each year per person.

If so…that is a lot of dead just birds.

--Mitchell Hegman