BIRD OF THE WEEK NO. 29

Bullock’s Oriole

KRIS HOPPE colored everything around her. Over her life, she mastered weaving, quilting, painting, and sculpting with glass, and color was her true north in each medium. When I met Kris, she was seventy-eight years old and living with her husband in Ashland, Oregon, in a hillside home filled with her creations. She had active glass and quilting studios in the backyard and had recently invented a way to make mobiles from disks of cut paper stiffened with colored paste. I liked her immediately. Kris had a straight-ahead look that conveyed wide-eyed curiosity behind a bemused smile. And in the summer of 2018, two years before she died, we took a bird walk together that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

ASHLAND IS SURROUNDED by the Siskiyou Mountains, and the valley’s many creeks attract a generous mix of water and forest birds. The day after arriving that summer, I got up early and hunted for them at a nearby lake and along one of the main creeks in town. When I returned around ten, scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit were laid out on a table on the deck. At breakfast, I described the birds I’d encountered—a bluebird family, an osprey diving for fish, and the acorn woodpeckers that had eluded my camera. Kris listened quietly and, after a pause, surprised me by asking if she might go with me the next day. I said I’d be happy to take her, but we’d have to leave before sunrise to catch the early light. At five the next morning, I found her waiting in the driveway. Her husband was also there and urged her not to go, reminding me that she’d had a recent fall. “I guess it’s nice to have someone who cares about your wellbeing,” she said as we drove away. Kris did need my arm a couple of times as we made our way down a creek-side trail, but walking slowly and deliberately is an advantage when trying not to startle birds. About an hour in, we came to a bridge across the creek, a sturdy affair with metal guardrails. The bridge was abutted by a yard-wide strip of grass that ended in a steep drop to the creek below. Kris went straight for it and, alarmed, I went straight after her. When I got close, she abruptly sat down on the grass and pointed to a woven nest hanging on a branch ten feet away. And for the next hour, we sat quietly, holding hands, and watched flame-orange Bullock’s Orioles repeatedly fly off and then return with insects to feed their young.