Birds of two feathers

There are two different birds that I love to hear lately.

The After-Midnight Bird

One of them sings in the middleof the night, off the back roof of this apartment building somewhere, the only other wide-awake thing in the darkest part of morning when I happen to be up too, pondering work. It trills with a brightness that is almost domestic– recalls yellow kitchen curtains, green lawns, and the wry postman. Its call is the equivalent of turning on a lamp, out in the street, in the middle of the evening, and then turning it right back off again.

The BART Bird

This bird is camoflauged in the grey and trilobite shade of the train station, under the speckled glass eaves of the rain shelter, its call curling, then spattering, over the rows of needles tacked along the edges and walls (pigeon deterrents). This bird must be so abnormal from pigeons that it horrifies the pigeons, with feathers and temperament of such a different league as to have come from some deep, chaotic place. Its call is truly amazing, makes commuter heads turn, thinking vaguely, “jungle? Aphrodisia. No, an exotic purgatory.” Finally, the train comes whooshing out of the tunnel and blows a hooting, hollow call, as chilling as the jungle bird’s, if you only learn to hear it as a message out of context– incomprehensible, but thrilling.