Pyrrhuloxia
Level of Lucidity: N/A Level of Cohesiveness:
Lucid Intent? No
This dream has been viewed 536 times.
I went to look at the birds feeding on the front porch stool feeder. I know! Highly original dream, isn't it? Anyway...it was daytime and seemed overcast though it might not have been winter; I'm not sure. I feel both my parents were home; perhaps it was early afternoon. There was still a feeder in the place of the stool feeder with its pie tin of sunflower seeds, but as in most such dreams the view was a bit different, as if the porch were constructed a bit differently and/or the feeder was a bit higher as it seemed to be at eye level, not with me looking down at it. A strange bird had landed on the pie tin (which seemed bigger as this bird hopped slowly across the food to the other side of the tin, whereas in reality just one hop and it would be on the other side) and was tilting its head as if to give the food a closer look. It was facing me. It did this funny little hopping dance from one feeder end to the other, left to right, all the while eyeing the seeds with head cocked.
My very first thought was, "This is a tufted titmouse." For it seemed grayish and had a small dark marking on the head, though this seemed to be around the eyes (not quite a mask, but similar); but then I thought, no, this is not a tufted titmouse. The thought of a nuthatch might have briefly gone through my mind, since it was bigger than most of the birds I see, and gray, and was acting rather like a white-breasted nuthatch, but it was not a nuthatch either. It was a bird unfamiliar to me. What was it?
I leaned forward and focused on its face. Instantly, it was like I was right up close to the bird, getting an extreme closeup view, like my eyes had become magnified--the strangeness of this didn't strike me in the dream, and in fact, aside from this anomaly this part was very realistic, as I told myself, "This might be the only time I get such a good look at this bird. I have to take a really hard look at every detail I can and remember them so I can look it up and see what it is! What's its beak color? What's the color of its throat feathers?"--etc. I looked very hard and carefully at all these details, committing them to memory so I could hopefully identify the bird later on in my book.
The bird's color was different now. I don't recall the entire body as I was focusing on the head at the moment, but it seemed to have an eye mask or something similar--a darker marking around the eyes, I believe. It had a large, thick, finchlike bill--I remember telling myself to take note of its color, as beak color is something that often helps determine a bird's species yet it's something I often neglect to notice in real life. I can't be sure by now anymore but I believe the beak was gray. I think the bird also had a crest, at least based on what comes later, though it didn't seem to have one at first. Its feathers were mostly light pastels and might have still been largely gray but there were pinkish areas too, and color changes between the top of the head and the throat area, so perhaps it was gray on top and had a pink throat and underside, or at least had gray cheeks but was pinkish above and below. I don't recall having time to take note of other characteristics, I was so busy examining its head. I seemed to depart from looking out the window while the bird was still there, though that seems unlikely, I'd normally keep watching until such a strange bird is gone so I could get the longest look, or else I might get the camera and try to take a picture. I took no pictures in my dream; I just left the window and went to find my bird books.
In reality, I have two bird books I consult, a smaller paperback of Michigan species and a larger one with a thicker cover, a National Audubon Society guide to birds of the eastern US. I don't know if I still had two in my dream; it's like the two were combined, since in appearance I was seeking something more like the former, but its contents were more comprehensive, like the latter, because I believed I knew the particular bird I was seeking and that bird, in reality, is not in my Michigan guide as it's not a native bird. (This thought didn't occur to me in the dream; more in a moment.) I think I poked around the living room first, didn't find my book, so went to my bedroom. I looked in an area analogous to where the plastic bin with the drawers is in reality; it was less messy in my dream but still cluttered. There was a book here that looked a lot like the guide I sought, a small shiny paperback with bright colors, but when I picked it up I realized it was some kind of book (maybe in the same series as the bird guide?) about getting rid of mice and pests from your residence. I opened it up and either within or on the cover was some kind of drawing of a mole or rodent of some sort, colored in brown, and mention of ways to deter pests, maybe through the use of bird feeders? I said something aloud to myself about this, I can't remember what, maybe something like, "Well, here's my book on pest removal, which I completely forgot even buying, but it's not what I'm looking for..." and I set it back down.
I went back out to the living room, I think, where Dad was, and I think I at last discovered my bird guide on one of the end tables, though I'm not sure where exactly it was found, only that I did find it. I was dismayed because there was a huge amount of caramel-colored lumpy goo all over the bottom, mainly on the bottom cover but also all along the textblock. It looked like some kind of candy had melted on it since it was lumpy like with bits of nut or something. It had hardened/dried and was still very sticky and would be quite a pain to remove. Just something that had been spilled on my book. The book was probably not RUINED, but it was messy, and I knew that not only would it be sticky and stained but it was just so disgusting that I was very upset and my eyes teared up and I probably whined a little. Dad had helped me pick it up or find it, and he understood my misery, but wasn't very sympathetic, as if to say, "Well, you should've cared for it better or put it someplace safer." I knew I would have to clean the book off sometime, especially if I wanted to use it, but I was so skeeved out by this messy sticky stuff that I just set it aside and felt sorry for myself.
I might have found another bird book or something because I knew what species I wanted to look up--the pyrrhuloxia, a species native to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. It's a rather cardinal-looking bird except that it's gray with a red mask, crest, and red on the wings; also, its bill isn't orange-red like a cardinal's, but is yellow and even heavier and stubbier, giving this bird a very snub-nosed appearance. I have only ever seen one image of this species, in my Audubon guide, and have never bothered looking it up anywhere to learn more seeing as it's not native to our area at all; in fact, now I wonder why it's even in this guide which is supposed to be for the EASTERN region! Perhaps this bird occasionally makes its way further east but is not native here?--usually the guide mentions if that's so, but it doesn't in this case, this is a warm-climate bird. *shrug* Anyway, the dream bird's appearance did very superficially resemble that of the pyrrhuloxia in the book, in that it was grayish yet tinged with pink/red and had a darker area around the eyes, as well as a heavy bill, though of the wrong color and slightly wrong shape, plus the dream bird might have been smaller than a real pyrrhuloxia, perhaps more like a white-breasted nuthatch. In my dream, I did not say the name of this bird out loud (I don't even know how it's pronounced, and I had to look it up in my book just to get the spelling right!), and I don't think I even had the conscious thought, "I think that's a pyrrhuloxia!"--I just know that this was the name running through my head in the later part of the dream and after I awoke. It's like even in the dream, it was an almost unconscious thought, not fully realized--"I believe this is a pyrrhuloxia and so I'm going to look that up in my book." I wasn't even aware enough to tell myself this, I was just automatically going to look up that particular bird and see if it was the one. This is probably why I never got all excited or confused at seeing such an unusual bird so far out of its range--to get excited would mean I'd have to be aware it was a pyrrhuloxia, and I wasn't consciously aware of that yet. I had to go look it up and make sure first, THEN I believe this thought would have reached conscious awareness, and I would have gotten excited. Hard to explain, I guess.
I don't believe I ever got the chance to make sure if it was a pyrrhuloxia, so the thought never reached full awareness until awakening. My only knowledge of this bird is from that one photo in my book, but it's very distinctive looking, so I would probably know it on sight, especially since it's not from around here!
Compare the sticky substance marring my book to a similar event in "Where Did All These Books Come From??" I'd also like to point out how I "zoomed in" on the bird's face as if with a camera, and told myself to take note of specific details; this reminds me not only of "Taking Down The Details" in terms of me doing such a thing (aside from that the dreams are not related), but also of a phenomenon I've noticed both in dreams and in my waking life--namely, my occasional inability to tell what a familiar object is when I first look at it "in whole," recognizing it for what it is only when I focus on it and look at the individual details more closely. Please see "Changing Chickadees" for a dream example; I thought this was limited to dreams only, until some days ago, in real life, when I turned on the porch light and saw a dark shape in the snow. My first thought was it was a cat, and I was ready to shoo it away, but then I made myself look at it harder and saw that in fact it was a rabbit. Now that I recall that, this isn't the only time that's happened; on a different occasion I turned on the light and saw two shapes out in the snow, and had no idea what they were at first, then looked harder and saw that it was two orange tabby cats, which I ran off--with both the rabbit and these cats, on my first glimpse of them I had absolutely no idea what they were, it's like all I saw was their general shape and color and my brain could not figure out what they were until I looked harder and saw rabbit ears or tabby stripes. Like the object in its entirety made no sense to me, so I had to "break it down" to make sense of it. I find this inability rather puzzling, especially seeing as I never used to have such an issue. I've heard of people being unable to make out the whole of something, just its individual components, but whatever this is doesn't sound quite the same; I still see the whole, I just have to take the individual components and piece them together first. (An even odder detail is I'm the exact opposite when it comes to the human face--I can picture a face "all put together," but if asked to describe individual components, as might be done when making a police sketch, I am unable to do so unless that face is right there for me to look at.) *shrug* This only happens occasionally, usually in relation to an animal on the porch, so I find it more curious than bothersome.
No immediate associations I can think of aside from the obvious, regarding my feeding of wild birds. We get a few cardinals, but never a pyrrhuloxia, and I have no idea why it appeared in my dream.
