Wednesday, while walking down a residential Halifax street, I heard something that made me stop and listen.
When I heard the sound again I said to myself, “that can’t be.”
Yet, when I pulled out my phone and Googled away, I discovered that, actually, it was.
There is something wonderful — something mysterious and melancholic that is redolent of long-ago summer and a piece of open country that has yet to be messed with by man — about the call, OK the coo, of the mourning dove.
The YouTube video that I found showed one, skinny black bill, spotted wings, plump body tapering to narrow tail feathers, on a fence post in what I imaged to be its normal rural habitat.
Yet when I called David McCorquodale, the avid birder who teaches biology at Cape Breton University in Sydney, he said I wasn’t imagining things.
“It is possible,” he said. “Although they are less common right in the city than in suburban areas.”
He directed me to an online database of bird sightings. There I learned that, this Tuesday alone, a trio of mourning doves were detected in Halifax, along with a barred owl, a whack of American goldfinches, a handful of cedar waxwings, and a flock of dark-eyed juncos, along with a whole bunch of other bird species.
Thinking all the cool birds migrated south in the winter, I was surprised by this. Wrong again, said McCorquodale.
“They find a way to tuck themselves away and get out of the wind,” he said. “When it's really cold, most of them can last for a whole day without feeding, as long as they have enough fat, which they can burn to stay warm.”
This I took as the finest sort of news. The silent, grey, wind-swept season, after all, is upon us.
The long, dark days, when the sun seldom shines and the temperature perpetually hovers around zero, when people from other, warmer climates stagger down our streets, faces frozen in painful bafflement.
Even with global warming picking up steam, this time of year can test a person’s endurance, their belief that things will get better.
So, like you, I look toward the horizon where we know there is sunlight, and longer days, when we can shed our polar fleece, and watch the world come alive around us.
Wednesday, for example, the roofers finally pulled down the scaffolding in front of our house.
Since the repairs to our roof are covered by insurance, you would think that I might have done a little buck-and-wing.
Except the guys were fixing damage from post-tropical storm Dorian which, I should remind you, made landfall here on Sept. 7, which was quite some time ago.
What that meant was that most every day for the past 24-or-so weeks, I walked out the front door and looked up to where roof used to be, and saw sky.
I have also looked out the back window at the fence, also slammed by Dorian, which is still unrepaired.
I have tried to be philosophical about the situation, to say that some things are just out of our hands, so it is best not to worry about them, but in bleak mid-winter it can be hard.
So, like you, I look toward the horizon where we know there is sunlight, and longer days, when we can shed our polar fleece, and watch the world come alive around us.
Displaying most unfettered optimism, my wife and I have taken to talking about the types of garlic and asparagus we can plant in our first-ever vegetable garden, which we hope to enhance with the results from our first-ever compost bin.
Imagining, I guess, Norman Maclean-infused afternoons spent on some stunning river, I’m making noises about picking up the fishing rod again, and trying a little spot that someone mentioned to me this winter.
I bought a book the other day about, of all things, the philosophy of walking, a physical act that seems best performed with no real purpose in mind, and is surely more pleasant when done in shorts, under a blue sky, than while inside a parka.
Which brings me back to the mourning dove, whose call I think I heard for just a few seconds before someone nearby emitted a tubercular cough, and a table saw inside a house began to screech.
It was good to know, thanks to McCorquodale, that they exist within our midst. But, I’ll be honest: I didn’t need the word of a scientist to feel a thrill Wednesday.
What I heard was more than just an unexpected birdcall. For a few seconds, with another cold front bearing down on us — with my fence still busted nearly six months after Dorian’s winds — I heard a mournful sound that made me think of a summer night. A sad call that said, 'C’mon man, have a little hope.'
