The Bird Listener
by Jeffrey Greene
part 1
When he first heard the strange bird call, Isaac Bellman was alone on his backyard deck, though only minutes before, Claire had been with him. They’d been listening to the loud, repetitive call of a Northern Flicker that always reminded him of the Tarzan movies he’d seen — or rather, heard — on Saturday morning television as a kid. A jungle-y sound.
“Sometimes I think the damn birds are mocking me,” she said. “So loud, yet staying mostly out of sight.” She inwardly winced, her expression sure to be pounced on by her husband, who enjoyed weeding out the sight-centric phrases from her vocabulary.
“’Mostly out of sight,’ yes, well,” he said. “You have the advantage of me there.”
“I’ve described every bird in detail,” she replied in her mock-nettled tone. “The songs plus my word pictures are all you’re getting, buster.”
“Not entirely true,” he said. “I’ve stored a few heirlooms from before the measles struck the sight from my five-year old eyes, courtesy of those Scientists for Christ who conceived me. The heart-lifting red of a male Cardinal with its seed-cracking beak and regal crest. The Mockingbird and its astonishing repertoire, the tuneless Fish Crow, the bullying Blue Jay. Time has no doubt molded these moldy pictures into something very different from what you so beautifully describe, but I’ll hoard them with thanks. And thanks to you, too, wife, for being the eyes of this marriage.”
“You’re welcome. Time to cook.”
“What’s on the menu?”
“Arroz con pollo.”
“Anticipatory exclamations of pleasure.”
“Why can’t you just say, ‘Oh boy.’ Do you have to provide your own closed captions?”
“Grunts and squeaks of rueful contrition.”
“Leaving now.”
He heard the sliding glass door open and close, then turned on the voice-activated bird identification software and set it for three minutes. He had long since learned to identify by song almost all the birds that found his shady, un-landscaped yard congenial, but there was always a chance of a rare visitor. Early morning and evening were prime times for listening. As it got too hot and buggy, and then too cold, he would move indoors and practice piano.
All this sustained attention had taught him how competitive and dangerous his little yard was to the creatures inhabiting it. The birds vied for territory and mates, defended their nests against marauding crows, were ever alert for threats from cats, owls, clean windows and Cooper’s Hawks, whose preferred prey was songbirds. Their singing continued, except in the worst weather, often ƒrising to a stereophonic din of multiple species that he found deeply comforting.
Isaac had worked for the last twenty-three years as a librarian in the online branch of the Library of Congress, acquiring, reviewing and cataloguing books in braille, but something had changed in the last few months. There were rumors of lay-offs, buy-outs and forced retirements. He was fifty-seven and had hoped to continue with the job he loved until his later sixties, but his supervisor had hinted, with genuine regret, that he should be prepared to start inquiring after jobs at his county libraries.
His service dog, Sasha, had died of old age the year before and, unable to bear the thought of replacing her, he’d been working from home ever since, using an audio-response software program. Claire, who was ten years younger, drove him on his errands and had taken over the seeing-eye duties. Although she never complained, he felt guilty about his increasing dependence on her. But few knew better than he one of the first rules of blindness: accepting help, when needed, from the sighted.
His bird listening, as he liked to call it, was a respite from all the strain and worry about his work and Claire’s happiness, when he could immerse himself in his microcosm of the universe. The avian tribe was one thread of a vast living music. There was the rhythmic susurration of crickets and katydids at night, the baritone buzz of carpenter bees in summer and the ominous tenor of yellow jackets in spring, the cicadas’ outrageous wall of sound in late July and August, tree-cutting crews running their chainsaws and wood chippers, wind in the cherry tree shading the deck, the screams and laughter of children across the back fence, helicopters, planes, passing cars, the Good Humor ice cream truck playing its chorus-less version of “Turkey in the Straw” ad nauseam, neighbors walking their dogs and sometimes arguing with their phones, and after the relative quiet of winter, the almost daily sonic assault of lawn crews.
Whatever visual images these myriad sounds conjured were anemic relics from early childhood, largely replaced by dynamic, swirling textures of darkness specific to each sound and as precise as he imagined an image would be to a sighted person. He could hardly miss what he hadn’t seen since before he could remember himself as a person. His almost painfully acute hearing more than compensated.
The timer on his bird-identification software softly buzzed at the three-minute mark and turned off. He became aware of a gradual cessation in the competitive riot of song-making, as if all the birds in the yard had been spooked into silence. And then he heard it, a prolonged and very complex song of a bird entirely new to his experience. It sounded at times both near and echoingly distant, with a dramatic tonal rise and fall, one moment as sad as a Mourning Dove, then soaring upward to the joyous soprano piping of a White-throated Sparrow.
He was so absorbed in trying to identify whatever bird this was that he only belatedly turned back on his identification program, but as soon as he did, the song stopped. Not sure why, he turned it off and laid his phone aside. Almost immediately the bird took up where it had left off.
The song went on much longer than any bird call he’d ever heard besides the tireless Mockingbird, and, near the end, it sounded uncannily close to the high-pitched voice of a young girl singing to herself, assured that no one was in earshot of her eccentrically atonal voice.
After a single iteration, the bird went silent, and a few moments later, he heard the flap of what sounded like large wings. The new bird, he could almost believe, wished neither to be recorded nor identified.
He heard it again two evenings later, its call once more silencing the crowded field of bird calls, and this time he didn’t reach for his phone. He felt he’d aurally located the new bird in the higher branches of the tulip poplar, the tallest tree in the yard, almost directly opposite his position on the deck. Thanks to Claire’s painstaking descriptions, the entire back yard, its trees and foliage, were locationally mapped in his brain.
Its entire song, without repetition, lasted about a minute, an astonishing length for any bird. But he was sure this wasn’t a Mockingbird. He inched his hand toward the phone, and the bird stopped; when he withdrew his hand, it sang. He was amazed, enchanted by its music; for that’s what it was, he’d realized, music, less bird call than actual melody.
When it stopped, he waited for it to repeat, and a minute or so later it did, but this time from a much closer vantage, in the cherry tree hanging over the deck. Its closeness quickened his heartbeat. It was mere yards above him, and he had the oddest impression that it wasn’t singing for a potential mate, but for him alone.
What on earth would make him think that? He had often suspected, half-facetiously, that crows cawing nearby were ridiculing him, lobbing corvid insults at the flightless fool below. A subjective impression, to be sure, but this unknown bird really seemed to be speaking to him with the intimacy and directness of a private performance.
After one repetition — very rare for birds in general — it flew, passing right over his head, and from the feeling of displaced air on his face caused by its flapping wings, he knew it had to be a big bird, maybe as large as a crow or small hawk, which perhaps accounted for the intimidating effect it seemed to have over the commoner species frequenting the area.
It didn’t sit well, this feeling of being the object of the creature’s attention, because it contradicted his entire experience with birds. They spent their quick, busy lives devoted to survival, territory and reproduction, and although they found human suburbs convenient and relatively safe places to roost, they were always wary of, if functionally indifferent to, the ground dwellers inhabiting their giant nests. The idea that this apparently rare bird would specifically choose him to be the recipient of its extraordinary song, but would also forbid any attempt either to identify or record it, was as unlikely as it was disturbing.
Rather than simply telling Claire the story of the new bird over dinner, Isaac decided to try an experiment. He would suggest drinks together on the deck the following evening, then wait and see if the bird appeared when Claire was present. Her tone suggested bemusement at his invitation, since in fair weather it was all but understood that they’d have cocktails on the deck, but she agreed readily enough.
The conditions were perfect, clear and mild, and both the resident and recently migrated birds had a quite a party going in theirs and the neighbors’ trees. The Catbirds had just returned for the summer and were loudly asserting their territory in the Burning Bush shrub filling the southeast corner of the back yard. Sipping the excellent martinis mixed by Isaac with more intuition than measurement, they listened to the evening show.
He’d deliberately left his phone inside, and Claire happened to be charging hers, so luckily, no recording devices would disturb the conditions of the experiment. They sat together for about an hour, and as he’d half-expected, the strange bird failed to appear. When Claire went inside to heat up a leftover casserole, he told her he’d be in soon. And no more than five minutes later, the bird made its presence known, this time, he guessed, in the mulberry tree about two o’clock to his right. He noticed right away that its song was different, not in the phrasing or the rhythm, but in the tone, which seemed, to his ears, almost self-parodying. Or was he kidding himself? This was a bird, after all.
Then it flew much closer, into what was probably the ligustrum bush, just to the right of the deck railing, perhaps twenty feet away. He waited tensely, then had a rude shock as a human voice spoke from the bush, but not from human lips and tongue, something harder, less supple. It was his own voice, mimicked to perfection, and what it said was, “And thanks to you, too, wife, for being the eyes of this marriage.”
It answered itself in Claire’s voice. “You’re welcome. Time to cook.”
He couldn’t catch his breath, his heart was going so fast. He waited, then it spoke again, this time in his whispery baritone: “What’s on the menu?”
It replied in Claire’s voice, “Arroz con pollo.”
An escaped parrot, he thought. That would account for its size, talent for mimicry and its lack of fear. But not its aversion to being recorded.
There was a quaver in Isaac’s voice as he asked, “Where did you come from, sir or ma’m? Are you lost?”
“Are you lost?” it repeated in a different male voice, higher than Isaac’s.
“I think you’re the one who’s lost,” he said, both amused and disturbed.
“I’m so lonely,” it said. It might as well have been Claire speaking, so precise was the impersonation. Not like a parrot at all.
“Wish there was something I could do,” it said in the same male tenor voice.
“There isn’t, but thanks,” ‘Claire’ said.
The door slid open behind him and, at the same moment, he heard it fly away. He was being called to dinner.
“What’s the latest on the shake-up at the Library?” she asked as they sat down to eat.
“No change. We’re in a tense holding pattern, hoping for the best,” he said, refusing to give in to the temptation to mention the ‘escaped parrot.’ Because he knew now that it wasn’t a parrot, or any other species of bird he’d heard of or read about. Whatever it was, it had clearly singled him out for reasons of its own. It occurred to him that its song might be as derivative as its uncanny imitation of his and Claire’s voices, an artfully patched-together medley of many other species’ songs, designed to initially capture his interest. But why him? And where had it heard Claire say, “I’m so lonely?”
“Are you ever lonely with me?” he asked and immediately regretted it.
After an uncomfortably long silence, she said, “Sometimes. Who isn’t?”
“Only the dead, I suppose.”
“Why did you ask me that, Isaac?”
“Oh,” he said, embarrassed, “a little bird told me that dealing with an aging blind man day and night has begun to pall. And who could blame you? I am a burden.”
“Well, your ‘little bird’ is a liar. You’re not a burden, Isaac; you’re my husband. And, in case I haven’t mentioned it lately, you’re still the handsomest blind guy I know. Not,” she added, “that I know any others.”
“’And the eyes of the blind shall be opened.’ But not mine, Claire. When it comes to appreciating what a lucky pencil seller I am to have you in my life, I’m stone blind. Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive,” she replied, but there was the faintest chill in her voice that unsettled him. The rest of the dinner was a study in recovered equanimity.
Copyright © 2026 by Jeffrey Greene
