The Feathered Sprites of My Campus
Author: 蜗牛
Reviewer: 一毫秒的永恒
A winter morning is cold and quiet. The Sun has not yet laid its highlights across the surfaces around me, so everything retains its natural color. I like this hour: no noise, no distractions, no rush before the first class. I can leave home at an easy pace, clock in at work, and bring my binoculars along to see the birds on campus.
Today begins well. Soon after leaving home, amid the calls of magpies in the small square by the water tower, I pick out a faint zi-zi among the sparrows’ chatter. Probably a tit. Through the binoculars, it looks like a great tit, though it could be a Japanese tit. I confuse those two every time I see them. Even familiar birds demand attention.
Beyond the small central gate, the avenue of plane trees between the sports field and the shops is a veritable “path of angels”—or rather, angel droppings. Great patches of bird mess run together across the ground. Perhaps the birds hold a meeting here every day. Around the turn from spring to summer, many people have been challenged by azure-winged magpies along this road. First, a large bird appears on a low branch diagonally ahead, scolding with a stream of cries. The moment you walk a little past its perch, a gust brushes the back of your head. Turn around, and the magpie has already declared victory and withdrawn. It does not truly attack; it merely circles very close behind and above your head after you pass. I have no idea what kind of tactic that is. Once, I kept my head turned and watched the bird making the announcement. With me staring at it, it seemed too embarrassed to act. I finally walked backward out of its territory and spent quite some time privately delighted by the helpless look in its eyes.
Real attacks do happen, though not often. A close friend told me that she was playing with her son on this road when a young azure-winged magpie fluttered nearby. The two- or three-year-old went a little too close, and an adult bird dived at him. She hurried forward to shield the child. A day later, on the same stretch of road but without her son, the adult swooped from behind and pecked the top of her head. It genuinely hurt. She wore different clothes, so how had the bird recognized her? To us, birds of the same species and size can be almost impossible to distinguish. I do not know whether the bird I meet on the road is the same one I see outside my window. How, then, can a bird pick the same person in different clothes out of a crowd?
Even on this avenue ruled by azure-winged magpies, a dove will occasionally hide in silence. Whenever I see one, I look only at its collar. So far, campus has shown me spotted doves with black-and-white pearl necklaces, but never an Oriental turtle dove with a striped black-and-white collar. I will keep examining every dove I meet.
After twenty-two years on this campus, I know every tree and every blade of grass. A tree at the southwest corner of the sports field became the “king of trees” because an underground pipe leaked nearby. The same leaking pipe later caused its crown to be cut off. But a tree king remains a tree king: it turned all its stored strength into the largest leaves we had ever seen and became the center of attention. This is also where I once encountered a grey-headed woodpecker and a flock of white-cheeked starlings stopping on their southward migration.
Along Magnolia Avenue, red-billed blue magpies and light-vented bulbuls greet me cheerfully from the magnolias or the cedars in the rose garden. I know where they are going. The bulbuls will sing from the pines south of the western classroom building. The blue magpies will rummage secretly through the rubbish bin beside the western wall. Do they not know about the bin by the northeastern wall, or does that one belong to the crows?
After clocking in at the office building, I can stroll over to the small garden in front of the western classroom building and try my luck. In the morning, that garden is luckier than the one in front of the eastern building; in the afternoon, the reverse is true. After thinking it through, I decided the reason must be sunlight. A row of tall cedars stands at the southern edge of the gardens, followed by the school wall. In the morning, those trees block all sunlight from the eastern garden, while sunshine stretches directly from the square before the office to the western garden. I have watched yellow-bellied tits hopping among willow branches here and, with students—on a winter morning, cold and quiet, before the Sun had laid highlights across the world, when everything kept its natural colors; an hour I love, without noise, distraction, or the tension of first period, when I can leave home calmly to clock in and bring binoculars to watch campus birds—secretly observed a crowned hoopoe. Even when luck brings nothing else, the light-vented bulbuls singing at full voice from the cedar tops do not disappoint. Their calls at this hour are endlessly varied and never grow tiresome. From the little garden I continue west to the wall, then turn north. Soon I will see my favorite sprite. The thought brings a little anticipation and a little excitement.
First comes the Daurian redstart, a landmark in my life as a birdwatcher. Because of this little creature, I searched Baidu for two years and accidentally joined a QQ group for people who sell birds before finally finding the “Chinese Birdwatchers” group. These days I no longer search everywhere for the redstart’s hiding place. I need only hear its thin, crisp, metallic di to picture it bobbing its head and flicking its tail. In that respect, it resembles the wagtails that often exercise on the sports field.
The other is the black-throated bushtit, affectionately called the “little redhead.” Seeing one of China’s smallest birds demands both patience and luck. I usually listen first for a very soft zi-zi. With experience, a quiet sound nearby becomes distinguishable from a loud one far away. I stand still and watch. Once something flickers among the branches, I raise the binoculars, and the little bird appears: a narrow white line around its neck above a black diamond-shaped patch. Then I examine the forehead. If the crown is not pure black but chestnut-red, it is my little redhead. Only when my arms and back ache from holding the binoculars for so long do I lower them and walk away content. Beside a bushtit barely visible to the naked eye, a large red-billed blue magpie makes the moment feel perfectly peaceful.
Farther on is the western dining hall, an excellent place. Birds can eat, drink, play, brawl, and quarrel there, with only a wall between them and the grove outside the school. It offers both an advance position and an escape route, so no wonder black drongos choose it as a base in early summer. I still wonder whether the great spotted woodpecker fills its stomach in the trees or on the ground in front of the dining hall. Two winters ago, a flock of light-vented bulbuls quarreled with a blackbird here so loudly that I heard them from twenty meters away. At first I could not see the blackbird and assumed an azure-winged magpie had upset the bulbuls. The magpies were not involved, and only then did I spot the blackbird. I saw no blackbirds for the rest of that winter or the next. I thought they had left the campus for good. Yet suddenly there they were before me: one, two, five—no, still more—a whole flock of at least seven or eight. At the sight of me, they scattered from a tree in the flower bed, to the great cedar by the dining-hall entrance, over the wall a few meters away, and back again to hide among privet leaves. One greedy bird on the ground refused to leave. Its orange-yellow bill gave it a charmingly foolish look. Standing still, it held its head high and alert. The moment it began walking, its anxiety showed: head lowered and stretched forward, a few hurried steps, then stillness with head raised, then neck out and head down for another quick dash. The pattern repeated until I was laughing inside. Compared with the magpie’s calm, unhurried stride, it made me spare a second’s sympathy for the pressures these birds face.
This beautiful campus has been my home. Now I am about to leave the place where I have lived and worked for twenty-two years, and my heart is full of reluctance. I remember the pagoda tree between the dormitories with a flat, sesame-cake-shaped hornet’s nest. I remember the Oriental greenfinches calling from the crowns of white poplars. But do they remember me—the person who, before understanding the principles of birdwatching, once scared apart a mixed flock of sparrows and greenfinches feeding on the sports field, just to identify which bird belonged to which species more quickly?
The author’s school: Mianchi High School, Henan
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