Some weeks ago, I was explaining to my friend Amy my favorite birdcall. This particular bird usually sings the call in whole tones, but sometimes they sing it in semi tones and minor thirds as well. I tend to know the call in its whole tone form, though. In fact, I wasn’t aware of the other variances until I researched the call a bit more.

This call is one of the calls that belongs to the chickadee. Imagine, if you will, a bird singing E-D-D in a rhythm of long-short-long. (The short is barely perceptible.) Whether they sing those actual pitches is immaterial, but it’s not without reason I chose those specific ones as an example. Whenever I hear this call, I always hear the chickadees singing mi-re-re, in a way where do will never arrive. Just sing, “Three blind mice,” except since mice on the same tone as you did blind, and you get the idea of how much re just calls forth and announces do before it even arrives, and how unsettling it is to leave re hanging without a resolution to do.

(Of course, if we were singing in D-mode, we’d be imagining something else entirely, but for now let’s stick to C-mode.)

But the chickadee! How I love your music! How I adore your music! Your music announces spring in a kind of unending question that will never receive an answer except from other chickadees that will merely repeat the question, on and on and on, until forever, never resolving to a tonic, never providing us with that moment when the music comes definitively to an end.

For years and years, however, I spent my life reacting to this music in a kind of, “Oh! It’s that bird call I like!” kind of way, not really taking time to look up what bird made that music.

Until recently.

Which then led me to look up more and more birdcalls after I learned the chickadee’s, memorizing them, and quite remarkably, my morning bike ride became flooded with an added vibrancy, a vibrancy where not only did I get to listen to the wonderful music birds make, but I got to listen to them knowing the name of the bird that made the music and therefore also got to imagine the colorful patterns the birds might have on their feathers as they made the music.

The bold cardinal, for example, sings a melodious tune of several glissandos. The call I’m most familiar with starts with two glissandos ascending and then proceeds with five or so descending glissandos. It’s a much more energetic and bouncy call compared to the chickadee’s much more calming and relaxed nonchalance.

And on and on I went, learning more and more of all these wonderful sounds. And with learning all these songs came flooding memories, like when you smell baking cookies and suddenly you’re five years old and it’s Christmas. The blue jay’s somewhat harsh call, hawk-like, conjures memories of foggy mornings in the country, very early in the day.

Most surprising of all, was when I learned the call of the American robin. The robin always felt like a commoner’s bird. “Everyone can recognize a robin,” I’d always say to myself.  (And if you can’t, then you don’t get out too much.) For some reason, robins always felt like the peasants of birds, perhaps because it was these birds that I’d most commonly see bouncing up and down in grass scrounging around for worms. That’s the image I have in my head, these robins. For some reason, only robins do this. And it’s peasant-like. All other birds are in the trees, perched high above the robin, staring down at them, making fun of them. (Or so I imagine.)

But then I learned the glorious music robins make. Their music is marvelously calming and relaxed, but slightly more complicated than the calming and relaxed music of the chickadee. The robin sings a kind of tremolo, the pitches not as defined as the chickadee’s, but defined nonetheless. And this call (for whatever reason) reminds me of visiting my old grandfather at his home in St. Anthony, MN, where across the way from his house there was a wonderful slide, some swings, and monkey bars all painted blue and yellow. (I wonder if they’re still there.) And the times I had on that slide and those swings and those monkey bars, all the while inadvertently attentive to the music of the robin that, for all these years, I thought was the peasant of the birds.

But, a peasant no longer, the American robin. No living thing is a peasant. All are glorious and wonderful in their own right.

(Well, centipedes in my home might take some persuasion to get me to think so. And moths are dumb, too, and mosquitos are quite icky, but at least they’re food for birds and bats and so on. And I’ll probably never warm to spiders and snakes, but give me time. For now I’ll just lie to myself and say to myself that all are glorious and wonderful in their own right, which I suppose they actually are in the grand scheme of things.)

In the end, how vibrant the outdoors become when I open my ears to the music birds make. Biking along Cedar Lake, the birds are present but difficult to spot as I zoom by, but their music isn’t difficult to spot. Within a half hour, I’ll have biked by forests and lakes knowing that chickadees were nearby, along with blue jays, red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, orioles, and any number of other birds that I still have yet to learn their songs.

But most of all, I shall adore the robin, whose music conjures wonderful memories of visiting dear old Grandfather in St. Anthony, MN, on a cool, mild spring day.

Musicians’ fascination (well, anyone’s fasciation) with bird song is as old as time, and Olivier Messiaen will always come to mind as a famous example of someone who adored the music of birds.

As I finish up writing my current work, Cat Haikus, do watch out for some birds that might make an appearance.