Most people pass them without thinking about it. Just birds on a wire. But once you notice them, you start seeing them everywhere. There's almost always one up there.
Sometimes it's just a single bird. Sometimes it's a whole row of them, spaced out in a way that almost looks planned. After a while, it stops feeling random.
They don't seem to act the same up there as they do in the yard. On the ground everything is quick. Hopping around, turning, moving from one spot to the next. Even in the trees there's constant motion.
But on the wire, they slow down. A head turns, a foot shifts, and every now and then one lands a little too close and another bird shuffles over, like someone sat in the wrong seat. Mostly they just sit there. Sometimes I wonder if they're waiting for something.
I suppose being up there gives them a pretty good view of what's going on. Maybe they're keeping an eye on things. Maybe they're just taking a break. Who knows for sure.
But I've noticed they do something similar around the birdhouses. They rarely fly straight to the entrance. They'll land on a fence, a nearby branch, or something close. They sit there for a few seconds looking things over before deciding whether to go in. If something startles them, they're gone in an instant. Just as quickly, they come back, landing almost exactly where they were before. Most of the time, it's the tree branch they return to first.
That's when I started looking at the wire a little differently. The wire isn't where they're going.
It's where they stop for a little while.
You see it throughout the day. The wire sits empty for a while, then one bird lands. Another joins it. Before long there's a whole line again, as if nothing had interrupted it in the first place.
For years, I drove past birds sitting on wires without giving them a second thought. Now I catch myself looking up to see who's sitting there.
I still don't know what they're waiting for.
But apparently I've started keeping an eye on them. Or maybe they’ve been keeping an eye on me all along.