Top Gun

Denim Spirit is back after a June pause

Stelgidopteryx serripennis, what a horrible name. It’s common name is not much better: Northern Rough-winged Swallow. This makes it sound raggedy and down and out, or like an adolescent acting out and trying to look tough. If my identification is correct, this bird is an amazingly smooth, adroit top gun of the air.

When the lake is calm there is a dramatic air war that takes place over the water in front of Rabia’s and my eyes. I watch birds but I am not a birdwatcher. For a long time I assumed they were Martins even though they are brownish and fly like swallows. I know how real Bird Watchers can be because I have some in my family, so I want to be very humble about this identification in hopes that no one will go on a rant about how I could possibly have so mis-identified these winged creatures.

Anyway, dog and me watch them intently on mornings when the wind is calm. In fact, they are very distracting to my mindfulness practice. I watch them and explode with curiosity about the mechanics of their manic flight verses other birds, such as straight forward and hyper wing-speed duck flight or lackadaisical and slow rhythmic heron flight. These little guys swoop then glide inches above the water but never touch it. Surely they are snagging all kinds of breakfast bugs along the way but any head or beak movement is not visible. I keep wondering how much insect protein they need to capture for the expense of all that energy to be worth it. Nature is kind of ruthless that way — the food intake-to-energy-outflow ratio.

My dog Rabia watches them too, the same way she sometimes watches television. She of course perks up anytime a four-legged animal, especially a dog, appears on the flat screen. But she will briefly sit and watch humans too, if they are running on a basketball court or gridiron. I sometimes wonder if she is seeing the same images I am when Jokic or Giannis do something spectacular, and if she is also amazed that humans can do such things since I am her primary human reference point? But Rabia can watch those air acrobats skimming the lake almost as long as I can, at least until something closer to us moves and steals her attention.

We will return home and spend less than fifteen minutes eating our breakfasts. But Rabia’s bowl of hard brown pellets with a dollop of mushy soft canned food on top is part of 64 million tons of carbon dioxide created each year feeding our cats and dogs. That is the same as driving 13.6 million cars for a year. Producing enough eggs to feed my daily habit has the equivalent carbon footprint of driving 518 miles plus it uses an amount of water equal to 386 showers. Add my daily banana on top of that and it is another 64 miles of driving and an additional 51 showers worth of water.

Those little swallows out there are burning all kinds of energy to feed on insects and producing minuscule amounts of carbon. I know, why do I ponder all these things when I could just be sitting there present in the moment, Rabia by my side, and at peace with the world?