Smelly Lilacs

The tulips were showing their last droopy colors. The iris’ were ready to pop for a week or two of runway-like exhibitionism. The trees in the small park were half-dressed, embarrassed by their young fresh leaves, waiting for their green siblings to fill in around them. 

And oh those smelly lilacs. 

Their short-lived incarnation makes me holler 

thank you Jesus. 

And then, the warblers.

Every spring is the same. Year after year. And yet, every single time, I’m shocked out of winter doldrums by the sheer variety of beauty and fragrance in the cultivated and in the wild city gardens. A text or an email or an article from birding organizations will remind me to listen for migrating warblers. They pass through as the tulips fade. I hear them. Never see them. 

Warblers visit Chicago on their way up north from Central and South America. They’re tiny. My old eyes are acclimated to spotting bigger birds—starlings, blackbirds, crows. Even sparrows are larger than warblers. I look, but mistake the warbler for a leaf or a twig, even a large bug.

But the other day, on an unusually seventy-five-degree May morning, I passed under a tree while Elsa sniffed around the ground cover for messages from new and old pals. I heard a symphony of birdsong overhead and looked straight up to see tiny bright-colored warblers flitting from branch to branch, hunting insects. 

I switched on my iPhone, pressed the Merlin bird app, and recorded a Tennessee Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Yellowthroat, and American Redstart all singing their wee hearts out within shouting distance. I suddenly realized I was in a bird “fallout,” a phenomenon that occurs when curious weather slams into migrating songbirds in the air and they descend into the trees below. 

The weather systems predict the number of songbirds that may be migrating over Chicago on spring nights. Attracted to their reflections in the windows of highrises, they accidentally kill themselves by flying into lit buildings.

The uncommon migration fallout happened twelve hours after Chicago’s unusual sky-drenching from the northern lights—yes, the northern lights! The aurora borealis: blazing bits shooting out of the sun, hitting the diluting atmosphere with undulating ribbons that lit up the Chicago night. All this only a month after a solar eclipse. 

In the park, a dog-walking neighbor neared with Zeus, stopped, and looked up. 

“Whatcha lookin at?”

“Warblers.”

“Oh,” and he continued on. He lives in my building and told me a few days before that he’s planning a hiking trip to the Rockies because he “likes nature.”

Me too.