Birding on a Warmish December Day

I'm back!

(Listen to the radio version here.)

Two days before my Veterans’ Day birthday, I found out I had invasive breast cancer. I spent the rest of November in a daze, trying to figure out how to wrap my head around this life-altering news.

December 1, 2023 may well be the only December first since I started birding in 1975 in which I didn’t notice a single bird—we had to be at the hospital before first light for a bunch of preliminary stuff, surgery lasted 4 ½ hours, and by the time my brain was clearing it was getting dark again. Nowadays, a double mastectomy is called “day surgery,” though they do usually keep patients overnight.

That evening, I was feeling chipper enough for my daughter and son-in-law to visit with Walter. He brought me a special present that he’d chosen all by himself: a cool little forklift, which seemed exactly the right choice for someone whose arms were going to be too weak to lift things for a while. He also wanted to give me a tiny bird who could ride in the forklift. He couldn’t find a chickadee or Pileated Woodpecker, but a Bald Eagle did the trick.

In the morning, I was ready to see birds, but only noticed some pigeons, starlings, a crow, and some distant gulls before they discharged me around noon.

I was already pleased with how mobile my arms were, and soon after we got home and I looked out the window to see a female Pileated Woodpecker, I had no trouble lifting my Zeiss 8x32 binoculars to savor her.

The place in my house where I can most easily see my feeder is at my desk treadmill in my home office. We don’t have a chair close to the downstairs window for viewing my feeders, so I couldn’t spend hours gazing out, but for my first two days home, any time I looked at the feeders, there the female Pileated was, or a female Red-bellied Woodpecker who’s been visiting for several weeks. It’s fun to imagine that this was a cosmic nod to female solidarity, especially because I didn’t happen to notice BB or any other males the first few days, but the truth is that birds are not on this planet to serve our romantic, sentimental, spiritual, or metaphorical fancies. They are autonomous individuals just as we are, and if they occasionally notice us as they go about their daily lives, they don’t care about our personal lives. Even if some of my backyard birds do pay specific attention to the woman filling the feeders, I can’t imagine any realistic way any bird could have the slightest awareness of a surgery that removes body parts that are strictly mammalian. But as certain as I am that these two woodpeckers did not appear at my feeder with the intention of cheering me up, their presence had exactly that effect.

I took this photo in 2022.

Recovery from cancer surgery is complicated by all the stress and anxiety involved in waiting for the pathology report. On Monday, I got an email telling me the test results were available on MyChart, which was the way, a few weeks earlier, that I learned I had invasive breast cancer in the first place. This time all the technical language about stains and sectioning tissues was much harder to follow, and neither Russ nor I could be 100 percent certain that it really meant what we thought it meant. I tried to be patient waiting for a doctor or nurse navigator or someone to call in person to explain, but I didn’t get a call until, two days later, I impatiently sent my own message to MyChart asking if someone could please call and confirm what the pathology report meant.

As it turns out, Russ and I had it right—the cancer was entirely restricted to the tumor, which was removed with clear margins, and the lymph nodes were also clear of cancer. I cannot possibly exaggerate how relieved we both were. I’ll see the oncologist on December 22, but based on the pathology report and on the fact that my rare form of breast cancer—a papillary carcinoma—is very unlikely to metastasize far from the original site, I should get off without debilitating treatments.

The first photos I took of BB after surgery, including this one, are essentially identical to the ones I took the week before.

I first noticed BB, my banded male Pileated Woodpecker, at the feeder on Thursday, the morning after I got that positive pathology report. He showed up again in the afternoon while I was in my office, and I couldn’t help but wish I could take his picture. I’m not supposed to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds for at least a few weeks more, and I expected that I’d have to wait at least a week or two to manage my good camera with the long lens, which weighs 5 pounds 14 ounces. I went over and picked it up, ready to put it down the moment I felt even the slightest twinge or pulling or discomfort, but holding it was quite comfortable, so I walked to the window, opened it, and took a few pictures of BB at the feeder. It felt SO good!

On Friday, Russ and I took a walk around the block, unencumbered by optics. On Saturday, I got a text message about a mixed flock of waxwings visiting some mountain ashes just a few blocks from my house. I didn’t want to lug my camera on a walk yet and am not supposed to drive while I have drains coming out of my torso, so Russ drove me over.

The sky was darkly overcast, the wind strong, and the waxwings uncooperative because of all the people milling about, so I only managed a few reasonably close photos of a Cedar Waxwing at the berries and none of any Bohemians except at a distance. But I was happy to see them at all, and thrilled that it was so easy to wield my camera. I’m back!!