It was suddenly 65 after a winter of ice and the creek was a mass of floating icebergs. The edges were filled with cracks and sinkholes from people who tried to walk on the ice and crunched right through. Where it looked thin, it took the chunks of rock I threw and bounced them right off onto the opposite bank. Where it looked thick, in broke off in razor-sharp layers that we threw at a tennis ball marooned in ice.

Swirling in circles in one of the waterfall eddies was a perfect circular iceberg. Its surface was covered with rocks and logs people had thrown at it to try and break it, all in vain. It was clearly thicker than it looked, because it looked like it would break at the touch of a bird's feet. We sat on the rocks at the edge of the creek as the iceberg swirled and sloshed towards us. When it reached us I put out my foot to kick at it, thinking it would be solid. It wasn't. A whole side broke off and left me ankle deep in water that would have been ice if it hadn't been moving.

It was my inclination to worrywart around about how cold it was, how dangerous it was for my foot, etc., etc., even though it didn't really hurt, but we had just finished watching something we'd never seen before. A little black bird, maybe the size of a sparrow but fatter, was bathing in the creek. Not just wading in a half centimeter and fluttering around, but actually diving in at the tops of falls and flailing about underwater, struggling against a current that's strong for most humans, then surfacing, smacking his beak, doing a little knee-bend dance, and diving back in. Every time he emerged, he was fatter.

We couldn't get enough of him and followed him up the creek almost to the point of being late to where we were going. We speculated that maybe he was a fairy-tale-like bird leading away from (or to) our dooms, like if he hadn't made us late we would have been hit by a truck at the intersection we should have been at at that certain time, or if we had ignored our commitments and followed him all the way up, we would have found ten million dollars in gold, but... we don't come from enough of a fairytale world that we paid any heed to this idea. When it was time to turn around and make our meeting, we turned around and made our meeting. If we lived in fairytale land, we'd probably be dead. Or else hopelessly lost in a tangle of brambles. As it was, we forgot about the little black bird almost as soon as he was out of sight. If you were supposed to lead us to our fortune, bird, then I'm sorry.

Does anyone know anything about whether birds recognize their own voices?

I had thought that they did, and I remember learning that in Animal Behavior, that to most birds, each nuance of their call was as specific as our consonants and vowels are to us.

But I've been coming more into contact with birds lately because I ride to work before 6 in the morning, and for some reason that's bird-time. Birds have control of the deserted parking lots of the malls, the fallen foliage on my street, the sidewalks up until the very second my bicycle wheels power through, the sky above the mountains, everything.

There was a bird in the Target parking lot who had a call that sounded like a toddler crying, 'Wait! Wait! Wait!' It was sitting on a lightpole facing across Pearl Street towards the other strip mall, and its voice was echoing back almost two seconds after the original call had finished. And the bird would call, listen, cock its head as its voice came back, then respond. Call, listen, cock, respond. It sounded, and looked, for all the world like it thought it was having a conversation with some phantom buddy perched on top of Barnes and Noble.

I thought: stupid bird. I thought: I hope he isn't falling in love. I thought: I hope he doesn't go over there and try to have a rendezvous.