Friday, May 5, 2017

Does Someone Wanna Coax him Out?

It's the beginning of May and we birders still have a lot to look forward to. Yesterday I heard a northern waterthrush in soggy woods by the river within a mile of home.  It's a jolt of momentary melody and another debonair songbird whose entire class of creatures has always gripped my heart; even more than most animals birds are for some human beings the utmost subjects of art. That heard bird, a species of warbler even though it's been named 'waterthrush', foretokened the 2017 arrival of breeding warblers here to the northern forests, or to the North Woods, or to the bush, as known to Canadians.



A seasonally recurring bird in watercolor/pencil, seen in fall along the shores of Lake Superior: Calm and a Pipit



Since birders are people of all different kinds of drive and talent, it seems there are various attractions inherent in birds that may trigger any one person's fascination with them. I've known of birders to come from backgrounds as varied as industrial manufacturing, auto repair, law and politics, the military, music, teaching, graphic arts, the church, medicine, the biosciences and the hospitality industry. Some birders are assertive types who will challenge others and campaign against civic wrongs; others are retiring, comparably meek sorts who prefer the company of nature and animals over the rest of us, but who might after some agonizing turn out to a public meeting in order to confront the prospect of disaster. So, out of the cross-section of types described here, why couldn't an invitation be made to Donald Trump to come witness a spring bird migration? 

Of course he could prove to be exceedingly bored, lacking the powers of eyesight or the curiosity to bother sorting even a single moving bird out of its background. But what if he's never been properly tempted with the opportunity to make birding his own kind of sport? And what do I really know about Donald Trump beyond what I've read, including suggestions that he's got dementia coming on? But if all it would take is a certain kind of appeal to a certain notion of sport within Donald Trump then would someone who knows him, or knows someone who knows him, try taking him on a field trip? If he could see splendor in a $$$ designer cheesecake, or even in a double Big Mac meal, what mightn't he see in a bird that's flirting its magnificent tail, or speeding after prey, especially if he could spot the bird before his companion(s) did. It would give him a personal triumph, which he demands at all costs, from what the articles about him say. Going after new and different birds could stoke his need to pursue a flying quarry worth more to brag about, maybe even in his own sense of aesthetics, than a tiresome golf ball on turf, though he might or might not have to let go of old biases toward the end result of getting laid. Of course too he could walk along, or roll in his cart if he must, at his own pace, and once coming in from the trail he'd find his day changed and even some explosive kinks in his mood loosened up--for no reason he can name. At any rate I'm just saying what if... because, in a desperate ploy to stall his issuance of executive tweets, simple measures like this deserve a little considering even if they come from my own most worthless daydreams.




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