Seen Through the Eyes of a Believer

Everywhere, there are birds. Birds in the backyard. Birds in the frontyard. Birds under the eaves. Birds in the garage. Occasionally, they even try to fly into the house.

“Must be their season,” the boy says.

“Yeah,” says his older sister. “It’s called spring.”

Spring is in the air, and so are the birds. Never have we seen so many birds. It is as if they blew in on El Nino, riding some jet stream current over California, then dropping down out of the sky when they spotted L.A., attracted by the healthy economy and the hip and well-meaning people who reside here.

“Maybe we could shoot one and stuff it,” the boy says.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Just one?” the boy asks.

“That wouldn’t be too nice,” says the little red-haired girl.

“OK, then we won’t,” I say.

The little girl is the birds’ biggest fan, sitting in a shard of morning sunlight on the back porch as the sparrows and finches dance around the yard.

She will zero in on one bird for minutes at a time, trying to establish eye contact, trying to get to know the bird one on one.

The bird wiggles. She wiggles. The bird sighs. She sighs. After a while, it’s hard to tell who’s imitating whom.

“Dad, come watch the birds,” she says.

“Maybe later,” I say, as I straighten the garage.

“You’re missing it,” she says, shrugging and returning to her spot in the sun.

The little red-haired girl watches the birds the way some people watch soap operas, following each chapter in their courtship, rooting for them to get together and make something of their young lives.

She likes it best when they flirt, when they flutter around the olive trees in the backyard, arranging romantic interludes and whispering in each other’s ears.

“Look, Dad, they’re going to kiss!” she shouts at one point, jumping up as if someone just hit a home run.

“Come put away your roller blades,” I say. “This garage is a mess.”

“Yep, I think they’re going to kiss!” she screams.

Sometimes the trees get so full of birds, they seem to sway under the weight, the branches bobbing under 50 1-ounce finches, some of them chubby as cinnamon rolls, many of them no doubt pregnant.

The birds dart around picking up twigs and string, then disappear into the awning or into the yucca tree, making nests and great plans for the future.

The little girl sometimes leaves pieces of string out for their nests, or some old hair ribbon she finds in a bathroom drawer, hoping the birds can weave them into their new homes.

“He’s picking up the string, Dad,” she tells me at one point, poking her face into the back of the garage. “He’s really picking up the string.”

“Maybe he can help pick up the garage,” I say.

“Birds don’t pick up garages,” the little girl explains.

She will spend almost the entire morning sitting on her softball glove, watching the birds, worrying about where they go when it rains. Or what they drink when it doesn’t rain. And worrying, most of all, that the babies will turn out OK.

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Every once in awhile, a skeptic will wander by and tell the little girl that she is spending way too much time watching birds. They will tell her that watching birds all morning is somehow a waste of a kid’s time, that her morning would be better spent other ways, watching cartoons or eating doughnuts.

It’s the kind of stuff they probably used to tell Thoreau when he was a boy, as he sat on his baseball glove watching ponds.

“You can’t anthropomorphize birds,” her lovely and patient older sister tells her at one point.

“You can’t what?”

“Anthropomorphize them.”

“What’s that?” the little girl asks excitedly, pretty impressed that she might be doing something she can’t even pronounce.

“That means birds are birds, and people are people,” her sister says. “You can’t think that birds are people.”

The little girl just shrugs. To her, some things aren’t arguable. To her, some things you just know.

“I just wish we could shoot one,” her older brother says sadly.

“Sorry,” the little girl says.

And eventually, the skeptics give up, as skeptics always do, and return to their homework and their computers, leaving the little girl sitting alone on her softball glove, soaking up sunshine and watching a pair of morning doves getting cozy on a phone line.

“Look, Dad!” she says.

“What?” I grumble, my arms full of gardening equipment, my pockets full of golf balls.

“I think they’re going to kiss!” she says.

* Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.