So Long (not Goodbye)

How's this for an amazing way to spend the last couple of hours of daylight?

In a parking lot at Grace and Adams (a mere five blocks from home), sitting with our backs to the band Jonathan Vassar and the Speckled Bird, watching chimney swifts swoop and flutter against a fading sky before finally roosting in the chimney atop a nearby tall building.

What in the world, you wonder? The chimney swifts are soon to migrate to the mid-range Andes for the winter. So before that happens, a group was gathered to enjoy a musical dedication to these fluttering birds who have adapted to urban living by roosting in chimneys rather than caves and trees.

I'd brought a chair, as advised, but friends Andrew and even the biologist Dan (who should have known better) had not, so we returned to my car to fetch two beach chairs so they wouldn't have to sit on cold asphalt.

When I opened my trunk, they both noticed it had a beach smell (granted, I've only been back from the beach for five days) and I spotted my beach towel, the perfect thing to keep me warm as the sun dropped lower in the sky. It's true, I have no blood.

Mary from the Audubon Society gave a short talk about the birds as we watched them pattern the evening sky. She pointed out that they look like "cigars with wings" and had an irregular wing-flapping pattern and a distinctive warble, all of which we could see and hear.

Her D.C. associate at the Society had pronounced that the swifts are "disappearing like crazy" (surely a scientific term) as fewer chimneys are built and those that are tend to have covers.

The solution, she said, was fake chimneys on rooftops and likened providing such things to the plethora of bluebird boxes that were mounted when bluebirds began disappearing not so long ago.

As she spoke, the flock of swifts grew larger and larger and then the music began. It was a moving experience watching the birds in the sky while the un-amplified music wrapped around us. The band was only doing four songs and as the last strains of the third song wound down, the last of the swifts dropped down into the chimney.

The final song, written especially for the occasion, "A Slow Song for Swifts" was performed to a now-empty sky, which was somehow appropriate since the swifts will soon be gone on their long migration to South America, hopefully to return to RVA in the spring.

I'm not doing an adequate job of describing the beauty of the birds and the music being interwoven as we watched, but take my word for it, it was spectacular.

All that field observation (as my biologist friend calls it) in the cold evening air had made me hungry, so I dropped by Secco for dinner and ran into an unexpected Oktoberfest walk instead.

Never has there been so much testosterone in Secco at one time. Walking in, one of the two guys standing outside gave me that classic, "How YOU doin'?" line and I almost laughed (which would not have been kind). Inside they were wall to wall.

But the front couches were full of off-duty Secco employees and friends who suggested I join them. Needless to say, they were more my speed than the beer walkers, so I sat down on a hassock. (The walkers had already done Joe's Inn and Commercial Taphouse; Can Can was to come after Secco from what I heard).

Dinner was speck-wrapped hanger steak with local veggies and legumes, truffle sauce and black truffle shavings, roasted spiced almonds with sea salt and Burgundy. It was so satisfying after being out in the cold (sorry, but for me this weather feels cold; a few days ago I was bare-legged with sandals on). Red meat and red wine were just what I needed to thicken my blood a little.

But it was well worth getting cold for the magic of the chimney swifts and the music. How can I move away from this city with things like this happening?

Well, should I decide to, you can be sure I'll have a chimney for swifts...or put a fake chimney on my house.

Wherever I end up.