I stood at the Center Street Light Rail platform the other day, enjoying the first hints of autumn weather as a cool breeze blew down Howard Street, and the sun was already showing signs of setting earlier. I normally occupy my time waiting for the train playing on my DS, which has proven itself to be a perfect train companion. In accordance with proper train etiquette, I always play with the volume off, and I don’t wear headphones because that would be too much hassle. As such, gaming in silence, I could easily hear the sounds of a Grackle sitting on the wire above me.
Grackles are noisy birds, and they always give me the impression they are really trying to tell you something. That something is probably “feed me,” but that’s a message nonetheless. This particular grackle was being even extra jabbery, so I couldn’t help but glance up to see what it was doing. It wasn’t doing anything in particular, it turns out. Just being a noisy bird. What lay beyond it, though, was far more exciting.
The trees that run along the sidewalk at the Center Street platform have never stood out much; this is probably because they appear to have been dead for quite some time. As such, I usually pay them no mind. Looking up at the grackle, however, I found myself looking at the dry, gray top branches of the tree on the opposite side of the platform. There, climbing up the central trunk, plain as day, was a Downy Woodpecker. I recognized it immediately, as growing up as I did in northern Baltimore county, along the edge of the woods, they were frequent visitors to the suet feeder in the backyard. This was the first time, however, I had ever seen one in so urban an area.
The woodpecker shuffled around the trunk a bit, took a few testing pecks different areas of the tree, and then finally took off to the east over the building tops. I only saw it for a few moments, but it really instilled me with a sense of hope; if this little woodpecker had found a way to survive in a place so trampled by humans, surely that was a good sign for nature in general?
The train came shortly after, and when I got off at my stop in Timonium, I quickly ran to the edge of the platform overlooking the drainage ditch and stooped down to look under the ledge where the sylphs had been residing since the incident of a few weeks ago. They were looking worse than ever, covered in grime and sleeping in what looked like half of an old car tire.
I told them my tale of what I had seen, and how I thought it might inspire them to give things another go. They hardly seemed to care, and one of them asked me if I had any matches.
Fuck them, I thought to myself; I know a sign of hope when I see one.
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Tagged birds, light rail, nature
