Blue Birds!
March 11, 2021 46 degrees
Today is the anniversary of The World Health Organization declaring the pandemic. The US had about 1300 cases of Covid declared at that point. It is also the anniversary of Josh and my eight month stay in Nantucket for the pandemic. We had planned to go to the Indian Wells tennis tournament as a vacation, but it was cancelled, so we came to Nantucket for a break.
I saw a peregrine falcon hunting at Low Beach that first pandemic walk I took on March 11, 2020. No falcons today at Low Beach, but I was delighted by blue birds at Squam Farm. Blue birds are often seen as a sign of spring’s arrival in New England, but I believe these birds over-wintered on Nantucket, since blue birds were seen in the late fall at Squam Farm. They were enjoying the warmer temperatures at the field at the intersection of the main path and the path to the mockernut hickories. Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) are a symbol of fertility in many cultures, and are often equated with hope, possibility and choosing happiness.
Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson on bluebirds:
The world rolls round, — mistrust it not,-
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird’s note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell
Interested in how the color blue (rare in birds) is made? Richard Prum (Yale prof and author of my favorite The Evolution of Beauty) discovered how feathers can be blue. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “Inside each cell, stringy keratin molecules separate from water, like oil from vinegar. When the cell dies, the water dries away and is replaced by air, leaving a structure of keratin protein interspersed with air pockets, like a sponge…When white light strikes the blue feather, the keratin pattern causes red and yellow wavelengths to cancel each other out, while blue wavelengths of light reinforce and amplify one another and reflect back to the beholder’s eye.” (March 2012) So it’s the physics of the feather rather than a pigment that makes us behold them as blue!
