Birds and (Im)migration

Ángel Franco/The New York Times

There seems to be a natural affinity between stories about birds and stories about immigration.

Back in January, NPR’s morning edition reported on the collision of migratory journeys in a Baltimore park: the migration of tropical birds and the immigrants who care for them via the Patterson Park Audubon Center’s Bird Ambassadors program.

The center’s director, Susie Creamer, said this about her program:

“The same individuals are traveling thousands of miles twice a year. And because many of [the women] have traveled that distance, they know exactly how far that is… And so, when I first mentioned it to them, it was literally an audible, ‘Oh. The same individual birds!’ and there was this sense of like, ‘Oh, say hi to Grandma for me,’ you know, Saludos a Mexico.”

One volunteer had a different take:

‘[My husband] used to grill them. My husband joked that we should grab one and grill it, but I said no — they are visiting and migrating.”

Today, the New York Times reports on monk parrots, imported to be pets, who have managed to escape from JFK in order make new homes in the New York City borough of Queens – not to mention elsewhere in New York and the United States.

All of which leads me to “Migratory Birds” by Canadian poet Surjeet Kalsey, herself an immigrant from India.

-KitJ