THE HOMING INSTINCT is widely shared among animals. The territory. The nest site. The song, a proclamation of home. The squabbles and the chases, a demonstration of having it, an insistence on holding it.
Birds too can become homeless. For the moment, let’s put aside the enormity of the continental loss of 3 billion birds since I was in high school, a quarter of North America’s feathered nations lost because we took their homes for sprawl and spreading farms, lost to pesticides and starvation, their grounds of procreation broken, sprayed, paved for more chickens to slaughter and more cows and pigs to torment and more corn and beans to support the still expanding human numbers that have, during my lifetime, tripled. There is no room on this page for the enormity of how so much more is so much less.
Let’s focus instead on one small tragedy averted. Her name is Alfie. An eastern screech owl. One of our relations. My little friend. There is much to report.
As I write this, Alfie
