'A Sound Like a Rusty Pump Beneath Our Window'

Among humans, complaining is always annoying. Short of murder, rape, theft and treason, it may be our most detestable quality. A complainer assumes he or she is important, and everyone ought to know all about it. When such people don’t get their way, they announce it to the world, loudly, often whiningly and at great length. And yet, my favorite bird is probably the king of avian complainers, the blue jay. When I hear one griping, I assume a neighbor’s cat is on the prowl. It’s a sound I enjoy for its boldness and total indifference to any other species. It can go on for hours and I fancy I hear the bird getting hoarse, like a marathon human kvetcher or a filibustering Congressman. The late Paul Lake published “Blue Jay” in the Autumn 1986 issue of The American Scholar and collected it in Another Kind of Travel (1988): “A sound like a rusty pump beneath our window Woke us at dawn. Drawing the curtains back, We saw - through the milky light, above the doghouse— A blue jay lecturing a…