New Year’s Bird
I’m a bird watcher. I do most of my watching in my backyard rather than making time to go to natural places, but even when I’m driving around town on errands, I watch for flapping or chirping or bright moments of color. Birds are an ordinary joy and I love them. A few years back I adopted a tradition of noting the first bird I saw on New Year’s Day. (I learned this from Canadian poet and author Amal El Mohtar whose books are absolutely worth your time.) Once I know what my “bird of the year” is, I can look up what that bird might represent. It is an augury of a sort. From what the internet tells me about the “meaning” of the bird and what the bird means to me personally I decide what I’m carrying forward.
In January 2024 I saw crows. I wrote about them in my Newsletter (which you can read here). Any time I saw crows all year, they made me happy. Crows are supremely confident problem solvers. I very much was that all year long. It was a good match for the year I had.
This year my first bird was waiting for me the moment I glanced out my kitchen window. It was a small brown puff ball sitting calmly on the perch of my feeder. At first I thought it was a house finch, which is a common and domestic sort of bird. I was beginning to settle my thoughts and find peace that my bird should be so common. It was logical that a common bird would be what came to me in a year where I didn’t have time to go seek a bird and instead expected one from my backyard. Then I looked closer. My bird was a female pine siskin.
She looks entirely ordinary, blending in with the sparrows and finches, but she’s unusual. It was only last week that I spotted my first ever pine siskin when her male counterpart flashed yellow at me in my back garden. If I hadn’t seen and identified the male previously, I would have doubted my identification. I stood at my window and watched her until she flew away only a moment later. Then I did my internet search.
Pine siskins are the hope and joy which surprises us unexpectedly like the flash of yellow on an ordinary looking brown bird. Siskins are beauty found in the ordinary. Seeing a siskin might be a message to embrace adaptability and resilience.
All of those things seem like good touchstones for me as I start the new year. They fit well with my intentions and priorities for the coming year. I don’t know if I’ll get to see many siskins through the year, they’re probably only stopping through, but I’m glad this one was waiting for me on New Year’s Day.