Not so Black and White
This time of year, most music comes to me by way of Christmas carols to which I rediscover I know the lyrics even if I only hum along to Josh Groban or the Robert Shaw Chorale and am only likely to belt out the Messiah’s “Alleluiah” if, as a chorus of one, I’m by myself. In the stores, there’s often some New-Agey re-make or the most recent Mannheim Steamroller’s take on the favorites, maybe Frank or Tony crooning “White Christmas” for the umpteenth time, although in our local Whole Foods last week, the improbable head-bopping MoTown version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” got some of us in Produce to forget (almost) the Whole Paycheck prices residing in each Gala apple’s rosy blush or organic kale leaf.
Elsewhere, something totally unrecognizable and amped up past levels no human ear should have to endure besieged my quick run into PacSun and Abercrobmie & Fitch to fetch gift cards for family teen-agers, a task that once completed was less focused on ticking off another listed item than making a quick, record-breaking sprint for the door even if only into the embrace of some really bad mall music, its subliminal rhythmic message to “spend, spend, spend.”
Most striking this time of year, especially in early morning, is the music that seems to be missing, an absence that can become more accentuated in the months ahead – the “dawn chorus.” The witchity-witchity-witch of yellow warblers, the cheer up, cheerily of robins, the admonishment by the rufous-colored towhee to Drink your tea, drink your tea. The early morning peep, tweet, chirrup, trill. One note, two notes, three. A slow-to-build crescendo that on the island in summer may include the distant high cheep of the Heart Island osprey. And, if I’m lucky, particularly if it’s foggy and the dawn’s light seems to have stayed tucked in for a late sleep beneath a warm blanket, a loon calling out in a rapid, multi-noted tremolo or haunting tremulous wail. Or if I’m luckier still, a hermit thrush’s impresario flutings, its clear whistled notes of impeccable purity breaking at last like struck crystals into a cascading melody of almost impossible clarity, all modulated with fresh harmonies and subtle variations in pitch, each ending ethereal. And all of this, if not impossible then seemingly incomplete without, as if they were the maestros, the crows and their raucous congress, their rusty-hinged croakings, or, as defined by a houseguest stumbling into the kitchen at 6 a.m., “What racket!”
Now, we’re still months away from the possibility of sun breaking through to melt the last of the crusty, heaped up snow, of temperatures on the steady rise, when, unexpectedly, a freshly returned meadowlark breaks into its song, the words of which, according to Montana poet Chris Dombrowski are: “I am the god of summer resurrected, come to salvage your soul from the snows.” Well, perhaps. But music to the ears, however you hear it.
Not that I don’t celebrate my fellow winter stay-at-homes: the sparrows, nuthatches, tiny wrens, the bright “purdy, purdy, purdy” cardinals that for color alone deserve our song. Few winter miracles come in a smaller package than the golden-crowned kinglet that no bigger than a walnut and at a mere five grams – the weight of two pennies – survives a Maine winter, the most brutal, well inland, deep-wooded kind. Hard to imagine that music resides in that miniscule package and is stoked with energy enough to emit it.
Now that we’ve gotten our first snow here in the Midwest, the mornings seem even quieter – at least after the snow plows have barreled past and the roaring snow blowers are done for the day. But this week, in this season of gifts small and large, wished for and unexpected, a wee bit of the familiar morning chorus was given me. As I sat at the dining room table, my favorite place to work when the winter sun with more than a vague, radiating heat cascades through the high bare boughs of our oak, a crow cracked open the quiet with its loud, agitating cawing. I recognized immediately what I’ve heard so many times on the island – the sentinel alarm call that means whatever neighborhood a crow declares as its own (a vast empire, to be sure) is under assault from a menacing interloper. Usually a raptor of some sort or a fox.
Crows are not unfamiliar in my Evanston, more-urban-than-suburban neighborhood. But they make themselves pretty scarce in winter. Not long ago, I read that there once was a huge winter roost of them along the lakefront not far from here. Now I’m not sure where they all convene come dusk. It’s believed crows flock to communal roosts for multiple reasons – warmth, the safety of numbers, the necessity of communication and exchange of foraging information and as a place for the young and unattached to find a mate. In other words, a social networking hook-up place. During the day, the crows spread out and return at dusk, stopping off nearby in what’s known as staging areas, a sort of milling and cawing equivalent of Happy Hour. Needless to say, these are not quiet gatherings, and winter tree roosts, often home to hundreds or thousands of crows, are not something most folks want to live near – or beneath.
As I listened to the crow continue to blast the quiet with its loud and possibly profane alarm, I was transported back to the island, to the times I’ve heard the crows go after an eagle or a goshawk, even dive-bomb a fox, chasing it across the mudflats on Pressey Cove. And what would make me think the behavior of crows is not, well, universal? That their job description would be any different here in a Chicago suburban neighborhood? Clearly this crow was up to the same task, rousting a menace somewhere close, and, absent any similar calls from pals, going about it solo.
Sure enough, from the front window, I spotted crow and in a nearby tree a tawny, red-speckled Cooper’s Hawk. A success story of reintroduction to urban and suburban Illinois, Coopers Hawks are now thriving. And, the crow’s protest notwithstanding, the welcome mat is out to these hawks, which, like the celebrated peregrine falcons winging among Chicago Loop skyscrapers, have made pigeons a hefty portion of their diet. To my eyes, the hawk looked like it was doing nothing more than checking out our block from a high branch but the crow would brook no incursion. Soon, the hawk flew off, wings spread against blue on its trackless hunt. And quiet returned to the morning.
But still, there was music – as there is in snow that pings against the skylight, ticks against the window’s glass. In the inaudible thump of snow falling from oak branch when the hawk, harried enough, took off. And in the crow, too, whose task now seemed only to sponge up the sun. That, too, a sort of music. As there would be later when the wind, as promised, picked up, and the oaks limb creaked in complaint. When the cold, going deeper, settled in.
In junior high science, I learned that the cold is really an absence. An absence of heat. But as anyone who lives through a northern winter will tell you, cold is a presence. We might object, too, to the notion of black being the absence of color rather than, perhaps, the sum of all colors. Or that there is an absence of music in a black crow on a white bough in winter.
