Bottoms Up!

One of the many joys I have experienced in getting older is perspective. It takes time, mistakes, experience, and an open mind to gain the wisdom of being able to see things, anything, from a different perspective. And it takes courage to willingly see a situation from a different angle, even if it means looking a bit…unusual. Enter the Nuthatch.

My mom loved watching birds. She wasn’t much of an outdoorsy type, but she loved watching the myriad birds at the feeders my dad would put up at our family home. He had placed them strategically so they could be seen from either the living room or the kitchen. I remember being fascinated that she knew all the different kinds. She would tell me what each one was, male or female, and explain the different seeds were for the different varieties. What they ate depended on what type of beak they had. Grossbeaks and Cardinals with their short, thick beaks would go for the sunflower seeds, finches and sparrows would go for the smaller seeds and woodpeckers who were used to juicy bugs all summer would plunge their long sharp beaks into the suet cake. And when a new bird arrived that I hadn’t seen before, she would teach me how to find it in her reference book – the same one she had been using for decades and had checked off all the ones she had seen since she was a girl.

Identifying a new bird was always about noticing what made them different. “Start with the beak,” she would say. “That will get you to the right section of the book.” Then it was about noticing the markings, what made them unique. And she was so proud when I got it right. I learned to see their differences and appreciate their beauty, what made them special. And I developed favorites: cardinals, evening grossbeaks, downy woodpeckers. But none more so than the nuthatch, for the simple reason that it would eat upside down.

As a kid who tended to do things my own way, there was something about watching them munch away at the feeders with their tailfeathers in the air that just resonated with me. It was just the way they ate, and none of the other birds cared. There was enough for everyone, and they just took turns eating what they wanted, and how much they wanted.

Sometimes I would lay on the couch, with my legs up the back and my head hanging upside-down over the cushion just to see the world the way a nuthatch would. I would lay like that, watching T.V., observing the world from a different perspective for as long as I could stand the blood rushing to my head. Eventually, I would put my hands down next to my head and flip my feet over to right myself, laughing hysterically.

We recently put some bird feeders up at our house and one of the first birds to appear at the seed and suet cake was a nuthatch. I smiled at his tailfeathers and light-tan bottom up in the air and thought, “The world needs more of that, looking at the world from a different perspective.” I think I’ve gotten too old to do the flip, but I think maybe I’ll hang upside down off the couch for a bit and see things from a different angle. I invite you to join me in looking at the world from a new perspective, whatever that may look like for you. What do you say? Bottoms up!