Birdy

time she stretches her wings and flies across our yard onto our porch roof where the pigeons used to roost. I almost swallow my heart. She’s so beautiful flying, but so far away. My mouth gets dry and I have a hard time whistling but I manage. She flies straight back to me and makes a cocky, wing-down, no-flutter landing on my finger.
    Over the next days, I practice with the rest of Perta’s young ones. I throw them up one at a time and they all fly back to me. It’s much more fun than pigeons. It’s better than trying to fly model airplanes. I know these birds are flying for me.
    I wait every night but I still don’t fly outside the cage myself. This I can’t understand. My own children have started flying outside in the dream. I can see them flying but I’m caught in the cage.
    After a week, I try throwing up two birds together. I’m worried they might not pay attention to my whistle, but it’s fine. They come directly to me. I leave them flying for longer and longer periods before I whistle them back. One pair I leave out flying for fifteen minutes. Once I even go over and sit on the porch steps to watch them instead of standing in front of the aviary. They both come in when I whistle; no trouble. Still, I’m not flying myself; I’m confined to the cage.
    In my dream, I look more and more outside the cage and want to fly there. I talk to my children and they tell me it is a completely different thing. It’s not just flying to get food, or from one perch to another, but flying for the flying itself, flying free of everything.
    One day one of the young males sings from the tree hanging over our house. Hearing that beautiful song in the free air is awonderful thing. The singing has all of space in it ringing out to the open sky.
    Next I throw all the birds up at the same time. With a rush of wings, they take off in every direction. Most of them fly back to places they’ve been before. It’s lovely to see sparkles of yellow and green on the roof and in the trees. The trees are coming on with new leaves. One yellow male is singing up on the chimney of the house. The yellow against the blue sky is sharp and clear.
    I’m concerned about how far they will fly. If they fly too far they couldn’t hear my whistle. Canaries don’t have homing instincts or capacities like pigeons. In fact, for free flying, canaries don’t have many skills left at all.
    After five minutes, I whistle and seven of the twelve come right down to me. They come swooping in and land on my fingers, my hands, my arms. I walk into the aviary with them hanging onto me, give each some treat food, and put them in the cage. When I go out, the other five have flown to the top of the aviary. When I whistle again, they come down and jump on my fingers. It’s all gone well. I wonder what would happen if a cat or a hawk dispersed them. Would they still remember to come when I whistle or would they panic? I’m sure I’ll fly free in my dream that night, but it isn’t so. Even with all of them flying, I still don’t fly outside the aviary.
    As spring arrives, I take the birds out every day. They come to know and expect what’s going to happen. The other birds, the ones I’m saving for breeding, don’t seem to know what’s going on. In my dream I tend not to communicate with them; probably I’m feeling guilty.
    My fliers come to the door when I open it and jump onto my finger even before I whistle. I walk out of the aviary with them on my arms and shoulders and stand there in the open. I don’t want them to fly till I toss them up in the air. If one takes off by itself, I whistle it back. Soon they all know this rule. It’s like the starting of a track meet with false starts. The birds are between the pleasure of flying and the safety of what they know.
    After a month, I can leave all twelve of them, including Perta, out flying free for as long as an hour. The yard is their territory andnobody flies too far away. Once in a while, one will swoop over the fence out into the outfield of the baseball field, but there’s no trees to land on so they return. One bird ventures downhill toward the burnt-out Cosgrove barn but comes right back. They’re all learning the details of the territory and the landmarks for the aviary. I’m getting convinced you can train canaries to live in the open, like pigeons, and have an open aviary. I’m still not flying free in my dream and I’m beginning to know what’s wrong. I’m getting in my own