The Enchanted Aviary: The Chinese Oracle Birds

On the south end of the small loggia the old hermit located the Chinese Oracle Cage, directly opposite the altar of Chuoko Kung Ming, inside his bedroom. The cage was visible to passersby but, despite the tall window between them, the interior of the bedroom was not. As such, only when the oracle birds approved of visitors did the hermit admit them into the room to toss the ten coins and consult the oracle.

The three oracle birds that dwelt inside the cage were not rare birds that one would expect Chinese Oracle birds to be. They were, rather, wild, rice-field birds. One of the compound security guards called them "coo-coo-roo-coo-coos"s because of their long, throaty warble, actually their mating call. They were officially named, in Tagalog, "batubato"s, literally, "stone-stone"s, and figured in one of many Tagalog metaphoric phrases, "Batubato sa langit, ang tamaan huwag magalit" ("Whoever is hit by a stone that falls from heaven should not complain," referring to one's being hurt by the same words that one uses to hurt others, or the defense mechanisms reaction-formation and projection). 

These Chinese Oracle Birds were originally migrants from China, after all. In the harshest winters of that great continent, entire flocks of them crossed the sea and landed in the Cordilleras, where hundreds of rice terraces had been carved into the mountainsides. Such birds were hunted mainly for food. Being wild, they did not take well to captivity, and preferred to hide in trees and scavenge for their survival.

The bird man from P_________ had kept the rice-field birds well fed an watered. Not many bird lovers chose to purchase them because they seemed plain and unfriendly, and looked like small, brown (male) and gray (female) pigeons. They were not as colorful as the other birds in the traveling cage. They were never featured in bird books. They refrained from making sounds in the presence of strangers. Only when they truly loved their caregivers did they burst out in song, usually at sunset, a song as haunting and as melodious as a brief passage from a piccolo. 

By the time the birds were brought to the hermitage they were only too glad to have a stable home. Their cage had been a house-renovation present from one of the hermit's female students. The hermit furnished the cage with blue-and-white porcelain vessels and a sodalite crystal ball. The birds were nicknamed Ma Joong, Tao Gan, and Chiao Tai, based on characters created by the late Chinese mystery novelist Robert van Gulik. The characters were the first, second, and third lieutenants of the famous Chinese magistrate and detective Judge Dee, also known as Dee Jen Djieh. If the birds perched on top of the ball one after another in the presence of a person who wished to consult the oracle, the hermit took it as the sign that visitors could be admitted to view the altar.  

Not everyone who came to see the birds, however, had the intention of consulting the oracle. Many of the compound tenants would leisurely pass by and stop to watch the birds at the start of sundown, just waiting for them to release their enchanted calls.