BEETHOVEN BIRD

As the day's last light faded, already I was in the dark hut beneath the mosquito net drifting off. Then, just a few feet the other side of the hut's pole walls a Turdus grayi -- what we used to call the Clay-colored Robin but which new field guides usually name Clay-colored Thrush -- began calling, and of course his voice rang through the openings between wall poles. It's the time of year for Clay-colored Thrushes to call, though, and at dusk they always sing with passion. Our page on the interesting species is at http://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/turdgray.htm

What caught my attention was that this particular bird was a virtuoso singer. He sang with extraordinary vitality and enthusiasm, his long phrases of effervescent, fluty chortlings with certain notes echoic, or pure, or bending upwards or downwards, all interspersed with saucy clicks and smacks, and some passages decidedly seeming to ask a question, while others purred in tones seeming to say, "I know... I know... "

The longer he sang, the more astonished I was that not only could he conjure prettily contrasting notes and phrases but also convey what struck me as feelings or emotional states. Once, after sounding sweetly melancholy he broke into loud disharmony, followed by what distinctly reminded me of Beethoven ending a pastoral passage with something like a tonic donkey's bray erupting into roaring, bouncing hee-haws evoking the donkey on a pogo-stick, head thrown back, ears flopping, buck-teeth un-lipped.

The next evening I paid attention to all the Clay-colored Thrushes as they sang, and was struck by how distinctive each bird's call was. Some singers were singularly unimaginative and unenthusiastic, while others were inventive but not convincing, like a kid pounding on a grand piano. Some were fairly good overall, but not spectacular. And then, at the same moment as the night before, Beethoven bird appeared again, and now, having heard such mediocrity, his artfulness was even more transfixing.

But, is it right to think of a bird as capable of artfulness? Couldn't this genius be genetically programmed, with all Clay-colored Thrushes being capable of Beethovenish outpourings, but only with practice? Maybe our Beethoven was simply the oldest bird in the community.

But, even if this genius singing is genetically coded in the species, and Beethoven Bird really feels nothing special as he sings, what about the mere fact that the genetic coding in this bird produces something that inspires a human mind, and impresses with its excellence? Doesn't that suggest something noteworthy and maybe a bit comforting about the creative but otherwise utterly impersonal impulse causing all things to be, in the first place, including us?

Beneath the mosquito net in the dark little hut I heard Clay-colored Thrushes sing and sing, and also the Turqouise-browed Motmot croaking, and Great-tailed Grackles delivering the last of their day's dissonances, and I came to no conclusion about it all, at all.