They come during the first week of quarantine, flitting from fence post to fence post, hovering around a decorative hollow gourd my wife hung with no thought that birds might make it a home. It’s a gift someone gave her in a time before we met, in a prior life Deedra calls a “fifteen-year mistake.” She’s never cared for the gourd’s pear-like shape or the sunflower drawn on its surface, but it made its way across the country, the way lots of useless things did, to our new home in a new state.