Louisiana birdwatchers learn how quickly life changes

One in all my favourite childhood books was “Robinson Crusoe,” the well-known castaway story by Daniel Defoe that first appeared in 1719. What first bought my consideration was the story’s locale, a tropical island that appeared very very like my south Louisiana summers.

I used to be additionally thrilled by Defoe’s sense of how rapidly life can change. Inside hours, his Crusoe goes from the home drudgery of a creaky ship to unique exile in a jungle wilderness — all due to a shift within the climate.

Defoe’s genius for drama got here from residing via turbulent instances in his native England, I feel, however he may need additionally grasped the vagaries of existence by watching birds. I developed that idea through the pandemic lockdowns, when many people tackled new sorts of studying to go the time. That’s how I got here throughout Defoe’s “A Tour By way of the Complete Island of Nice Britain,” an enormous travelogue he wrote not lengthy after “Crusoe.” Defoe wrote at a time when many individuals spent lifetimes with out going past their dwelling villages. His reference to “the entire island of Nice Britain” tells readers they’re in for an odyssey.

A vivid passage unfolds when Defoe stops by the coastal village of Southwold, the place he spots a large number of swallows, “such an infinite quantity that they coated the entire roof of the church, and of a number of homes close to, and maybe … of extra homes which I didn’t see.”

A neighborhood tells Defoe that the birds will likely be on their means, although it appears onerous to imagine that such a horde goes wherever rapidly. However by the following morning, as Defoe tells it, each swallow is gone.

For me, the departure of goldfinches from this nook of Louisiana every spring feels simply as abrupt. I first spot them in my yard round Christmas, they usually normally go away shortly after Mardi Gras. They’re principally olive once they arrive however get yellower because the climate warms. This 12 months’s goldfinches had been particularly welcome at our place as a result of they arrived through the vacation freeze final December, when every little thing else in our yard was brown and boring. At one level, they had been so plentiful that the garden appeared to roil with them.

When my spouse and I left for a brief street journey proper after Mardi Gras, I assumed we’d return to search out the goldfinches gone. Positive sufficient, they’d vanished throughout our absence, like tenants skipping the hire.

I believed I’d noticed a laggard final week, however it turned out to be a yellow-rumped warbler — a bit chicken, principally brown and grey, that will get its title from the splotch on its tail that appears like a dollop of mustard. I perceive that these warblers will quickly go away for different locations, too.

All of the extra motive to concentrate, I suppose. I watch the window these spring days as I as soon as learn “Crusoe,” wanting to study what’s going to occur subsequent.

E-mail Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.