Birds Feeding

[Jimmy O'Connell]

Birds Feeding

For weeks I’d never put bird food in the yellow
rimmed dish out the back; it would lie there
on the ground filling with rain water; no bird
would come to dip its beak, only the neighbour’s
raggy cat to check for milk, sniff, and in a cat’s
slinky way, move on to the next garden, hoping
for more generous fare. But then, on a whim,

I fill the bowl with breakfast muesli or wild bird
peanuts and within minutes it is swarmed with
the nervy flight of crows in a frenzy flock of grey
beaks nabbing and stabbing while sparrows circle
and flitter nervously for scraps; head proud starlings
on the garden fence attend to each new flight of crow
and a single magpie hangs back a vulture swoop
until all are flown from where they came.

How can it happen? How do they know when
a random act, a moment of pure chance has
fated them with gifts of food? Who signals?
What mysterious telepathy announces my fitful
generosity? Yet somehow they know. And what
else do they know, even before I know that
on a whim I decide to feed the birds?