Ordinary Beauty as seen by Leila Anasazi

I see the fresh-blood-red throat of a Pileated woodpecker up there in the cherry tree. I hear the drone beat of another drilling the trunk of a tree in the ravine. A myriad of chirps and twitters cascades from the branches of the plum, the apple, the big-leaf maples. I cannot identify all these little birds by sight. Finches, sparrows, nuthatches, juncos, towhees, and chickadees. The simplest ones have a beautiful song which they shower upon me from high in the cedar.

I am conditioning the Stellar’s Jays to associate my whistle with the availability of peanuts. I whistle, then throw a peanut or a few out on the ground. The Jays follow, one or two, or sometimes there are five here. They shop amongst the peanuts on the ground, picking up one shell of nuts, dropping it and picking up another. Amy says they are weighing them, and I believe she is correct. The more skilled of them can take one shell into their beak, and then a second one too.

I am in love with these Jays. Their clever ways. Their method of holding the peanut shell tight to the branch as they pummel it with their beak until it yields and cracks and the fibrous hunks of the shell drift to the ground. The nut revealed now, and they pummel it more and more, until it is in pieces just the right size for eating. Then it is all eaten, and I whistle again, toss a peanut to the ground in front of me. Immediately, down he flies from the branch, ready for more.