What these birds remind me of

 

Since we moved here I have been watching the seagulls flying outside our windows with great pleasure. This in addition to all the delightful and more comical encounters with them at the fish markets, along the boulevards, and of course at the beach. But from our windows they are at their most elegant, and to my great surprise remind me of the bald eagles we watched so eagerly from the windows of our Saint Minneapolis apartment.

Even to me it seems absurd that a seagull could remind me so regularly of a bald eagle. 

Check out this at least half fake picture I made:

Not much to it, eh? The eagle is surely twice the size. He is fearsome, dense, muscular, and imperious. Could there be two such different birds?

And yet maybe our way in is that dead fish they are both happily eating. These birds are, for all their vast differences, primarily waterside scavengers. And maybe that is what gives them some kind of similar quality out my windows across continents. The way they fly is astonishingly similar. Sure, in close quarters the seagull is far more active, ridiculous, and scrappy. The eagle is economical and careful about its energy. But out my window it is the same exact kind of imperious soaring they partake of, the same steady wings, and the same careful, slightly joyous use of the wind. And though in our picture here they look wildly different, in the air somehow they seem nearly the same size, with the smaller seagull's wings sprawling richly out, and its head and sometimes tail flashing white in the sky, dark and light, just like the eagle. They're both magnificent to watch as they glide with the barest touch of effort as they look about for...  nice... dead... things.

As we got towards Summer here another bird, apparently in for Spring and Summer from Africa, came to flood the skies. I don't think I saw a single one of them until maybe May? The air is rarely free of them now as, unlike the sometimes economical seagull, and the always careful eagle, these birds live most of their life on the wing. Their's is a life in the air nearly like fish in water. These are the swifts, and while I love watching them wheel about, they also evoke in me a strange analogy. These swifts curiously remind me of... mosquitoes.

Well, that seems even more inexplicable, but I have a guess for why they might seem alike. The swifts are feeding on insects in the air all day, and so why wouldn't they fly a bit like them, in their irregular patterns, in order to catch them? It at least seems possible to me. And maybe it's them we have to thank for how really minimal the irritating insects have been in this city.

But no matter, the truth is, mosquito-like or not, I am thankful to all these animals, nearly all birds, because this city life has its price to pay. The wilds can drift far away, and the rarity of the connection to that non anthropocene world becomes ever more precious. I am hardly likely to scoff at even the scrabbling pigeons here, where people seem to fill up every space in every way. Every single thing scudding across our hot skies is its own small piece of relief.

Even seeing a dead rat in the street, while evoking its touch of horror, also, like I would imagine it would for a seagull or an eagle, brings me a touch of delight. The world breathes in and out. I need every reminder I can get.