Birdy

all the birds out of the new flying cage. Some few females are still sitting on nests, so I allow them to stay in the cage.
    When the last nest is finished, I put the floor back in the cage to separate the upper part from the lower. I begin to select out the singing males from the female flight cage, and put them in the lower cage. As the breeding birds finish up their third nests, I move them into the flight cages, too. Birdie is tired but as friendly as ever and I take her out for a free flight. I take Alfonso out too and it’s the first free flying for him. His flight is weak from the long time in a small cage but he quickly finds his wings and takes long flights to the tree and the house. I’m not sure he’ll come back to the cage but he does. I decide to leave Alfonso and Birdie out with the free fliers. They deserve it.
    The free fliers are now totally out of the cages. They sleep in the tree or on the house. I leave the cage door open but they don’t come in. There are about sixty birds out flying free. It makes me proud to see them. I feel I’ve helped put them back in the air where they belong. I wonder if they’ll stay close to the house now when they don’t sleep in the cages. At the end of summer will be the time for northernhemisphere finches to migrate. What will these birds do? Will this instinct take them off and in which direction? Will Birdie and Alfonso leave and fly with them? How far can a finch fly without eating? There’s no way I can think of for them to get to Africa, their original habitat. Will they learn to live on the grains and fruits our finches live on here? Will they interbreed with other finches or stay apart? It doesn’t matter. It’s so great to see them flying free.
    There are over two hundred birds in the flight cages. More than half are males. The price of birds is astronomical. I’ll be glad when the birds are old enough to sell. I don’t want to keep birds in cages anymore. I’d really like to set all of them free but these young birds without free flight experience could never make it. Also, my father is very happy thinking of the money we will get when we sell them. He’s kept my mother off my back, so I can’t let him down. He’d like to get all the free fliers into the cage and sell them, too. He keeps listening to them and has all the males identified. He’s up to thirty-five males.
    I’m dreaming again, but in my dreams I’m always alone. I see the other birds flying but I stay away. I fly all the night alone. I fly to every place I’ve ever been. I fly over the roof tops and trees or sometimes high in the sky. It seems so easy and I’m more me, not so much a bird. It’s me, a boy, flying. I’m flapping my arms like wings and it’s easy. It’s just knowing I can do it that makes me fly. In my dreams I’m always wanting someone else so I can show them how to do it. It would be such fun to teach Al or my father how to fly. When you can do it, it seems so incredibly easy.
    The wholesale man comes and buys all the birds. We get nine dollars apiece for the males and three dollars for the females. The total check is for over fifteen hundred dollars. My father doesn’t understand why I’m selling the breeding birds, too. He still wants to trap the flying birds and sell them, but I put him off. They are my birds. I let him think I’m going to use them for breeding the next year.
    It’s quiet in the aviary now. I clean it all up and cover the breeding cages with newspapers. At night, in my dream, I begin to sense a strange restlessness in myself. Even when I’m flying, I’m thinkingof something else and I don’t know what it is. Then I know. I’m feeling the urge to flock and migrate. Is it in the other birds or is it only me? Is it in the dream birds, too?
    Daytimes I watch the birds and I’m sure they’re preparing to leave. There is much flocking and random flight. They have increased their eating and fly further distances from the yard. Sometimes there will be no birds at all in the yard for as long as two or three hours.
    My mother is starting to complain about the bird shit on things and the noise. The noise she’s talking about is the singing. My father says they’re all going to freeze in the winter cold. He says it’d be cruel to leave them out, and we have to get them back into the flight cages. Most of them have never lived in a cage.
    He opens up the door to the flight cage and moves the feeders inside. The birds start coming