Avian Magic

It is a cold January, and we have some avian magic in our backyard.

Hordes of sparrows cover the ground under our bird feeder, to eat the spilled seed, while others stand on the posts of the feeder itself and eat their fill.

Then some noise or movement, indiscernible to human ear or eye, disturbs them.

And they disappear.

Just like that.

There one minute, gone the next.

Now, they have not really vanished anymore than the assistant has been cut in two by the magician.

But they have flown to the dark elderberry bushes and the equally barren forsythia bushes in our neighbor’s yard just behind our fence.

Camouflaged and concealed completely from view, they seem to have simply disappeared.

They simply look like dark outlines of desiccated leaves.

And a couple of seconds later, when the danger is past, they all suddenly return.

There is something comic about them, how they move so quickly as to seem to disappear in a puff of smoke.

I think I could watch them for hours and not tire of it.

And the squirrels stolidly continue their ground feeding, unperturbed by the magic show around them.

What is all the fuss about?