Below is the transcript for Season 1, Episode 115 of Freely Written, a podcast by author Susan Quilty:
Welcome to Freely Written where a simple prompt leads to a little unplanned fiction.
[Light piano music]
Hi, friends! I’m Susan Quilty and today’s prompt is Birds of a Feather.
My close friends who are listening may already suspect what inspired today’s prompt. I recently got one of those smart bird feeders with a camera and I’m a bit obsessed. It took a few days for birds to discover the feeder, but ever since they did I’ve been sharing pictures with friends and finding out I’m not the only one who has suddenly become a bird watcher!
Is that an age we all reach at some point? The age where our conversations revolve around the best wild birdseed, the weather, and our various health problems? Hmm… Yeah, I’m okay with that. It’s fun to watch the birds, both from my window and from the camera, and I’m excited about the new unshelled, less mess birdseed I just ordered. Is that weird? Oh, well.
Both the bird feeder itself, and the discovery of bird watchers within my friend group, led to choosing this well-known adage as today’s prompt. If the phrase isn’t as well-known to you, the full expression is “birds of a feather flock together.”
As always, I wrote the story with my podcast process, which means I sat down with the prompt and wrote whatever came to mind, with no planning and very little editing, then recorded it to share it with you.
Here’s what came up today:
Birds of a Feather
There were three birds sitting on the railing. Two were mourning doves. The third was a house finch whose brilliant red feathers faded to a deep gray as they moved away from his head. His lowest feathers were nearly the same shade of gray as the two mourning doves, though they had little else in common.
“Do you think that I’m pretty?” the house finch asked, and the mourning doves didn’t answer.
“I think I’m pretty,” the house finch told them before chirping a happy song.
The mourning doves looked at each other, cocking their heads one way and then the other. Without a word, they spread their wings and took off into the blue sky.
“No matter,” the house finch said as he watched them fly away.
The next day, the house finch was in his usual place on the railing—closest to the bird feeder—when the mourning doves returned. They sat a bit farther from him and stayed close to each other as they settled in and preened their feathers.
“You’re back,” the house finch noted, and the mourning doves did not reply. They continued their grooming and shook out their feathers with delicate flutters.
“I’m Ned,” the house finch said by way of introduction. “I’m basically the mayor of this bird feeder, since I was the first to find it. Though you’re welcome to join, if you don’t take all the sunflower hearts for yourself.”
“You’re the first to find it?” one of the mourning doves cooed with a tilt of her small head. “We’ve been coming to this railing for years and this is the first we’ve seen of you.”
“Years?” Ned slanted his head inquisitively. “I’ve looped through this area many times and never saw a feeder until last week.”
“She didn’t say we’ve been visiting the feeder,” the other mourning dove tutted. “She said we’ve been coming to this railing for years.”
“The feeder is new,” the first mourning dove clarified, “and so are you.”
“Oh, I see.” Ned hopped closer to the feeder looking from the seeds to the mourning doves. He wasn’t all that concerned about them, despite their larger size, but it did seem prudent to assert his rights.
“While the railing may have been your perch for some time, its proximity to the feeder is what matters. If there was no feeder during your earlier visits, than it can be understood that I was still the first to discover its arrival.”
The mourning doves fluffed their feathers and nestled into the railing, entirely unconcerned with Ned’s self-important claims.
“Which means,” Ned continued uneasily, “that I have seniority at this feeder. Preeminence, if you will. Which is an important thing to settle during these early days. Do you concur?”
One of the mourning doves lifted herself slightly and smoothed her fluffed feathers. Ned skittered two hops away before regaining his ground. The other mourning dove watched them both from the corner of her eye.
“Are you asking us to leave?” the standing dove inquired softly. There was a trill in her voice that sounded sweet yet sent a chill through Ned’s feathers.
“No, you’re welcome to stay…” Ned offered hesitantly.
“I don’t think that’s up to you,” the resting dove called over lazily. She seemed half asleep, unbothered by whatever Ned might say or do.
“Well, as the first to find the feeder, I do have certain standing,” Ned insisted while beginning to crouch lightly.
The mourning doves looked at each just as they had the day before, tilting their heads one way, then the other, before suddenly flying away.
“Wait!” Ned called after them, but they had already perched on a nearby roof where he assumed they were using the distance to say rude things about him.
“How unreasonable!” he chirped indignantly.
As far as Ned was concerned, it was common courtesy to recognize the first bird to find a feeder. It wasn’t like he was driving them away. In fact, he had invited them to stay. He just wanted them to understand that there would be certain rules governing behavior around this feeder and it was up to him to put those rules in place.
But it was hard to impose rules on birds who simply flew away at the slightest provocation.
Ned hopped to the ledge of the feeder and tossed aside some seeds until he found a sunflower heart. He wasn’t even hungry, but he wanted the mourning doves to see him eating at the feeder. His feeder. The one he had found first, no matter now long they had been coming to this railing.
Over the next few days, several new birds arrived at the feeder. Most agreed to Ned’s claim of discovery. A few gave him a hard time, and he quickly put them in their place. Yet there was no sign of the mourning doves.
Ned thought he may have scared them off for good and felt surprisingly saddened by the idea.
Finally, there came a morning when the mourning doves returned. They perched on the railing just as Ned finished his breakfast and eyed him from a distance.
“Good morning,” Ned called, using a lilting tune of greeting. The mourning doves only blinked at him.
“Why are you always alone?” One of them asked abruptly.
Ned was silent.
“Yes, why are you always here with no fellow bird like yourself?” the other pressed, adding, “Whatever you might be.”
“I’m a house finch,” Ned cheeped sharply. “Have you never seen a house finch?”
“Oh, perhaps,” one of the mourning doves trilled airily. “One can’t be expected to remember which of you little birds is which.”
Ned lowered his head and raised his feathers.
“I am a very pretty bird, and I sing a lovely song,” he boasted, following it with a complicated run of notes. “While you are rude birds who haven’t even bothered to share your names.”
“Share our names?” the other mourning dove tittered. “With you?”
“Yes, with me!” Ned chirped. “We may not be birds of a feather, but we can be polite.”
“Is it polite to claim a feeder as your own?”
Ned paused, considering the question for the first time in his life.
“It’s what I’ve always done,” Ned explained, without quite answering the question.
“Ah.” The mourning doves tilted their heads at each other, but this time they did not fly away.
“Is that why you’re always alone?” one of them suggested. “I see.”
“No, that’s not true!” Ned argued. “I have a large flock. We spend much of the day flying from tree to tree and at night we settle in together.”
“Yet you’re alone here.”
The mourning doves watched Ned hop from side to side in mild agitation. He had many friends, but they didn’t spend every minute together and not all of them had found this new feeder yet.
“Well, sometimes I’m alone, yes, but… Oh, look!”
There was a flutter from the sky as three finches landed on the ground beneath the feeder. They went right to work on the fallen seeds but paused to call greetings up to the railing. Hi, Ned! What’s up, Ned? Hey, Ned, who are your friends?
The mourning doves cooed their own mild greetings, offering their names, Nelly and June.
“Oh, you’ll introduce yourselves to them?” Ned cheeped huffily.
“Yes,” Nelly and June agreed without explanation, then flew away with a series of lighthearted tweets and twitters.
“Oh, those mourning doves,” Ned shrilled before hopping down to join his friends. Though he kind of liked their cheek and hoped they would meet again.
The End
Thanks for listening. I don’t know much about birds or their behavior, but a bright red house finch was the first to visit our new feeder and we’ve always had mourning doves on our railing. It was fun to make up the birds’ personalities based on nothing more than seeing how the mourning doves at my feeder have been hanging back to watch the other birds, while the house finches will swoop right in.
If you enjoyed that story, please share it with your friends. If you’d like to learn more about my novels and other projects, you can connect with me through social media or my website: SusanQuilty.com. Links are in the show notes.
Until next time, try a little free writing of your own. Let go of any planning and see where your imagination takes you.
[Light piano music]
