RIVER CITY JOURNAL: SOMETIMES A MIRACLES IS RIGHT OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW

An otherwise ordinary Christmas Day turned into a pageant of feathered performers right before our eyes.

This is a true story. It's a Christmas story. Perhaps it needn't be told. Maybe you don't want to hear it. You might think it's too late for Christmas stories. Or you might suspect it's a made-up story. But it's not a made-up story. It's a true Christmas story. Ask my wife. Ask my brother. Ask my mother. They all saw it too.

It started when we -- my wife and I -- found a house to buy this past fall. We were taken with the tall trees -- two oaks, an ash, an elm, a giant magnolia, two good-sized dogwoods, a redbud and several evergreens -- that surrounded and sheltered the house. On the day we became owners of the house, we loaded the car with cleaning supplies. And two bird feeders, one a squirrel-proof all-purpose feeder, the other a special feeder for finches. And a heavy, made-from-concrete birdbath.

So, on that early-October day, we put the birdbath and feeders in the back yard, under one of the towering oaks, where we could see them from the family room and the kitchen. We filled the birdbath with water and the feeders with feed. And then we stood back.

Our experience over the years has been that birds flock to feeders and birdbaths, because it's easy. We expected birds to crowd into our new backyard. We watched. We waited.

For days there were no birds. Then we saw cardinals in the overgrown hedge behind the house. And we heard chattering and whistling birds at dusk. A few sparrows hopped and pecked in the leaves that were beginning to fall. A couple of squirrels tended to the acorns in the oak tree.

Even after we moved into the house, we watched the back yard, expecting to see a dazzling display of bird-type frolicking. We finally decided that another back yard somewhere in the neighborhood must be drawing all the birds.

"Be patient," my wife would say. "When it gets cold, they'll be here."

It got cold.

The birds came from time to time, in ones and twos. A nuthatch here, a titmouse there, the cardinals always in the background but not too venturesome.

On Christmas morning, we did the usual Christmas-morning things. We -- my wife and I along with my brother and mother -- had a nice breakfast, and then we opened presents.

In the after-presents lull, someone said, "I wonder where the birds are. Usually there are so many of them."

It was about 10 o'clock. I stood at the big window in the family room and watched the empty feeders. The birdbath -- complete with heater -- had nary a ripple.

Thinking the birds might be skittish seeing me standing in the window so close to the feeder, I started to move away. But before I could turn, a pair of cardinals came. They settled on and under the feeder as if they were regulars. They paid me no mind.

A half-dozen sparrows started poking in the leaves on the ground. And then some purple finches arrived at the finch feeder.

"Come look!" I shouted. "The birds are here!"

Some of us stood at the family-room window, others at the kitchen window.

"Look! Chickadees and nuthatches," someone said in the kitchen.

"And there are the tufted titmouses," I chimed in.

"Titmice," my mother said. "They would be titmice."

Then a squeal of delight from the kitchen. We all saw them. Four or five goldfinches had joined the purple finches on the finch feeder.

"Can you believe this?" I asked. "No birds, and now we have all kinds of birds."

"It's a Christmas gift," someone said.

It's a Christmas miracle, I thought to myself. How else to explain this feast for the eyes of colorful birds dancing to the tune of some unseen, unheard orchestra right outside our window?

And they stayed, first for five minutes, then 15 minutes, then half an hour. A couple of latecomers arrived: a red-bellied woodpecker who watched from the small redbud next to the kitchen. He made a couple of trips to the feeder, but he preferred to do his jig in the redbud branches.

"There's a flicker," I said, drawing everyone's attention to the base of the giant oak. The large bird did a couple of circuits around the tree and left as quickly as it came.

After 45 solid minutes of bird frenzy, the back yard was quiet again. The birds had other things to do, other places to go.

We were still standing at the windows, each silent in our own thoughts.

"A Christmas miracle," I said out loud.

Everyone just stood there, looking at the empty feeders and the bird bath with its calm water.

You may think the birds have been congregating every day in our yard, but we weren't there to see them. Believe me, we have watched every day since Christmas. The cardinals are getting braver. The sparrows come now and then. Occasionally a nuthatch dives in for a morsel or two.

But no stage show. No three-ring circus.

That was just on Christmas Day.

What a gift.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.