White Crown

White Crown

2022 was the first year they didn’t return. It was the second year in to the pandemic and she had been too distracted to notice their absences. When finally, after her third vaccine shot, she turned her mind back to enjoying some of her past activities did she begin to wonder why she hadn’t heard one. At first she thought they must just be late, got derailed by smoke or storms and that they would eventually show up. As September became October and October rolled in to November she felt a sick feeling inside. She didn’t really have anyone to explain this panic she was feeling to because, after all, as her husband said, no one is going to die because a bird didn’t show up. Where were they? Did they die on route from Alaska or did they go somewhere else, skipping the harsh desert? She began scanning the online forums. There was nothing. No mention of them. No one seemed perturbed, no one outraged. The few birders she knew just shrugged their shoulders in resignation.

The first time she had tuned in to a White Crown Sparrow song was when she was out exploring what had once been the largest Hohokam settlement on the New River. It was a series, a village really, of pit houses, nestled below the surface. Of course nothing remained now except their trash piles making these gentle rounds in the desert soil that the local kids just couldn’t help but ride their bikes up and down over, leaving tire tracks where once five hundred people had lived, worked, played and slept. Did the Hohokam hear the song of the White Crowned Sparrow? Did they wait anxiously every September for their return as proof that the earth had turned again and all would be well? Maybe they encountered them when they plucked the oddly sweet and mellow Hackberries from the shrubs on the edge of the wash. Or maybe, as they sat around the fire watching the sparks twist up in to the night sky or maybe watching a game between local families in (what we call) the ball court, they saw the White Crown Sparrows hoping in and out of the low shrubs. The ball court she now stood beside had been relocated from where it had been originally found, to make room for a new housing development. All it resembled now was a scatter of rocks on the ground, a poor replication of the origin hollowed out Amphitheatre. No one knows why the Hohokam abandoned this site around 1450. It can not have been easy to give up the place you called home for the past five hundred years. Did the White Crown Sparrows miss them when one year they returned and the people were not there? Probably not as there is no evidence that bird memory works that way. Did the White Crown Sparrows fail to show up one year and was that the year the Hohokam took it as a sign to move on? It didn't seem likely that the current occupants of the new housing development spent any time worrying their mind with either the Hohokam or the White Crown. She had come here one night to try to view the stars. It seemed ridiculous that she had to "try" to see the stars that were scattered in great arcs above her. However, when she got to the site that night, she realized that the amount of light coming from back yards, coupled with the heavy sounds of off road vehicles tearing up the wash (no doubt, parents and older siblings of the young destructive bicycle riders) made any star gazing impossible. In the distance she hear the yelps and howls of the coyotes. They might not have felt any nostalgia for the missing White Crowns but surely must have felt some disgust with the wanton destruction at the old site. Too many times had they heard the whistle of wind in their ears, only to realize that the humans were firing shots at them. Any why? What provoked the humans? There was a time when they could co-exist, taking just what either side needed to survive. Their noise, their machines, their hate was out sized. A great unravelling that would bring them all down. Maybe this is what nature waited for, silently enduring until the moment when it could begin to rebuild again, cell by cell without the humans. Nothing would miss the humans. The skies would be dark again, rivers would run clean and the White Crown Sparrow's clear song would return. All she knew was that walking in the desert would never be the same. There were of course plenty of other songs to sift through as she walked; Woodpecker, Towhee, Verdin and the improbable kissy sound of Anna’s Hummingbird. But all of these paled in comparison to the sweet and lilting White Crown, who could stop you in your tracks. No other bird song could pull you out of your thoughts (or worse, your phone) and force you to acknowledge its presence. It wasn’t the same feeling she felt in March when the White Crown left the desert, heading north to their summer breeding grounds. She silently wished them well on those occasions and thought about that first time trip the fledglings would make in September. So many miles to cover and now, with all we have thrown at them, so many more obstacles. Was that it then, a species so strung out that they preferred to remain in Alaska or far up north and wait for a certain death by freezing rather than attempt the journey through light and dust pollution, smoke, building collisions, drought and extreme weather. We simply have worn them out. Stretched them until the thread that pulls them south snapped. As she gazed out at the empty Hackberry bushes she knew she could would abandon this place. It would be too difficult to be here and relive the pain of their absence.