BY ANDREW MORKES, FOUNDER AND AUTHOR OF NATURE IN CHICAGOLAND
This is a story of the strange and wonderful ways in which humans sometimes connect with urban wildlife.
In the last month or so, a robin began visiting our backyard and became a ubiquitous presence in our daily life. Our backyard has many native plants, three apple trees, and 10-inch-tall grass (no-mow May) surrounded by a 6-foot wooden fence. I’m trying to re-wild some areas of the yard to match the Illinois prairie of the early 1800s, while also leaving room for fruit trees and vegetables and a few non-natives. I like to think of our yard as a mini nature haven amidst the busy streets, burned-up yellow lawns, and rows and rows of bungalows in our neighborhood.
In the early morning, the calls and songs of our robin (as we began to call him) and the other robins helped us begin our day. If I was outside, he swooped into the yard, pecking and poking at the dirt and grass, looking for worms and insects. I loved the way he hopped in the air and then poked his beak into the ground hunting for food. He kind of reminded me of a fox hunting in the snow. Our robin hopped in and out of my plantings of White Wild Indigo, Cardinal Flowers, and Queen of the Prairie. He investigated the mayapples under our apple trees and ate our ripening strawberries. I was most often watering our garden when the robin arrived so, I get it, he connected seeing me with easier access to food. But sometimes our robin would just land near our chairs as we enjoyed the evening. At other times, I’d see robins (possibly ours, too) in the branches of an American Basswood that’s planted on our parkway. Cardinals, sparrows, and the occasional pigeons and blue jays also visited our yard and trees.
The robin was such a frequent visitor to our backyard that I started to greet him when he arrived. He became more comfortable with me and eventually got as close as two feet from me as I watered or planted. As I watered, he’d almost synchronize himself with my movements to stay just out of my way but also take advantage of the watered soil and the insects and worms it contained. At some point, I’d completely forget about the robin when I went outside and started doing yard tasks, until I suddenly realized he was right behind me—either walking towards me or poking on the ground with his back turned. Trust between a human and a wild animal is a wonderful thing. Other robins also visited the yard, but they kept their distance or would fly away as soon as I entered the yard.
It got to the point that my entire family interacted with and observed the robin. We started joking that the robin was a reincarnated loved one coming back to visit. While I love UFO, ghost, and reincarnation stories, I’m a hard science person, so these just remained whimsical imaginings.
As a city dweller, birds, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and opossums—and our big, beautiful trees—are some of our only connections to nature. I have to admit that our family began to love our beautiful robin and our strange connection. Bird lovers won’t quibble with our love for a robin, but the average person may wonder about this degree of appreciation. Robins are some of the most ubiquitous birds in the United States. They are the waiter or waitress in your favorite diner that you count on seeing every visit, but take for granted. They are the blue sky that you expect each morning on a summer day. They are the guy or gal who goes to work daily, does their job well, but rarely gets a second look. Robins are not rare in Chicagoland like piping plovers, Ross’s gulls, and shearwaters. But as some only focus on the unique and rare birds of Chicagoland, it’s important to remember that robins are beautiful and special in their own way and worth our attention. Additionally, Audubon says that “because the American Robin is so familiar and occurs around places where humans live, it sometimes serves as an early warning of environmental problems, such as overuse of pesticides. It predicts that 9 to 23 percent of its range in North America could be lost by 2050 if we don’t reduce global warming.
The Arrival of the Tree “Trimmers”
Earlier this week, workers operating big, industrial ear-splitting machinery came to our neighborhood to trim our parkway trees. But instead of giving our trees a “first-day-of-school haircut,” the tree company contracted by ComEd and the city of Chicago buzz-cut our trees—and the birds in them—into near oblivion. The “expert” tree cutters were like sugar-crazed, five-year-olds given slippery garden shears for the first time. They lopped off the entire top of our neighbor’s tree, and about 35 percent of the American Basswood was cut and turned into mulch. There were at least five large bird nests in that tree.
This damage leads me to question the care of our city trees. With dangerous air quality in the news (e.g., terrible current conditions in eastern Canada and on the East Coast; challenging conditions for people with health problems in Chicago and in other cities; and dangerous air in Los Angeles, Reno, and other cities last year), it’s imperative that we protect and properly care for our city trees. This is true especially because studies show that a typical urban tree lives only between 19 and 28 years due to pollution and other urban stresses. Edward Scissor–handing our trees is no way to preserve our urban canopy.
Still as a Stone
A few hours after the tree “trimmers” completed their work, I found a robin lying next to some blueberry bushes and phlox in our yard just over the fence from the tree. It looked like it was just resting amidst the greenery. But robins don’t lie on the ground with their eyes closed as still as stones. I know that the dead robin may not be “our robin,” but no robin has since ventured close to us like he did. And, regardless, any bird killed by rapacious tree trimmers is one too many.
I buried the robin about 10 inches deep in our mint garden, where our robin often liked to dig for worms. I said a prayer that probably meant nothing and scattered prairie blazing star and purple coneflower seeds in the soil above him, hoping to turn darkness into light.
Final Thoughts
Grieving a robin?…some might ask. But seeing this robin each day brought me joy. He did his thing, and I did mine in the yard that we shared. I admired his beauty and the fact that he didn’t fear me. I don’t know what he got from me—except perhaps a pesticide-free yard full of native plants, berry bushes, and apple trees. And seeing the robin re-ignited my son’s interest in backyard birding and we, along with my wife, often discussed his latest visit.
Glimpsing that dead robin lying on the ground amidst beautiful plants hurt me, yet I understand that there are bigger things to lament. The world is still going to hell in a handbasket. Trump inspired a mob to try to overthrow the government, and he may still get away with it—and our democracy remains in peril. The Russians are still trying to erase Ukraine from existence and relentlessly bombing civilians. With the creation of a major sports league (and now its proposed merger with the PGA), the murderous and repressive Saudi government is trying to sportswash itself into respectability. Disturbing racial and economic injustice still exists in the United States. And our forests and rangelands are on fire because of global climate change that some lament, but most don’t want to do anything about.
But I still loved that robin and grieve its passing. And the damage to our trees in our small corner of Chicago made me mad. Maybe if more people cared about the little things in this world, we’d have a better chance of fixing the big, broken things.
Copyright (text and in-article photos) Andrew Morkes
Copyright main photo: Mara Koenig, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
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ABOUT ANDREW MORKES
I have been a writer and editor for more than 25 years. I’m the founder of College & Career Press (2002); the editorial director of the CAM Report career newsletter and College Spotlight newsletter; the author and publisher of “The Morkes Report: College and Career Planning Trends” blog; and the author and publisher of Hot Health Care Careers: 30 Occupations With Fast Growth and Many New Job Openings; Nontraditional Careers for Women and Men: More Than 30 Great Jobs for Women and Men With Apprenticeships Through PhDs; They Teach That in College!?: A Resource Guide to More Than 100 Interesting College Majors, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by the library journal Voice of Youth Advocates; and other titles. They Teach That in College!? provides more information on environmental- and sustainability-related majors such as Ecotourism, Range Management, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Built Environment, Sustainability Studies, and Sustainable Agriculture/Organic Farming. I’m also a member of the parent advisory board at my son’s school.
In addition to these publications, I’ve written more than 40 books about careers for other publishing and media companies including Infobase (such as the venerable Encyclopedia of Careers & Vocational Guidance, the Vault Career Guide to Accounting, and many volumes in the Careers in Focus, Discovering Careers, What Can I Do Now?!, and Career Skills Library series) and Mason Crest (including those in the Careers in the Building Trades and Cool Careers in Science series).
My poetry has appeared in Cadence, Wisconsin Review, Poetry Motel, Strong Coffee, and Mid-America Review.
This entry is beautiful. I’m so sorry about the loss of the bird.
Thank you for your kind words and for reading my essay!