Category Archives: Birdwatching

Country Bird, City Bird

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in Birdwatching, City, Country, Seasons

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During the years I lived in the country, surrounded by woods, I would occasionally visit someone back in town, and occasionally spend the night. Arising in the morning to step out for a walk, I would notice the birds singing. Everyone notices the birds singing, it’s a lovely part of being awake and outdoors in the morning; but this was my observation:

The birds singing in city and suburban areas were always more raucous, louder, and more ebullient than those in the country. In the country there were delightful, distant peeps and trills and calls from here and there. In the city there was always a crush of birdsong, what could rightly be called a riot of birdsong. One would think, from the demonstration they made, that there were many, many more birds in the city than in the country.

But the fact is, there are plenty of birds everywhere. The difference is that in the country there are many more trees to inhabit. In the city, they have to contest their nesting spots all the time. Much birdsong is just that: the announcement to the world that this is the spot where my mate and I have chosen to reproduce and raise our young. It’s our tree, you go find your own. Birds inhabiting one of the few dozen trees in a subdivision, or one of the ornamental trees in a strip mall parking lot, have so much more to to contest than birds who find themselves in a thickly forested area where the choice of trees seems infinite.

During the early 20th century, architect Frank Lloyd Wright spent much energy working to deconstruct the urban environment, to spread things out and reduce population density. His was a utopian vision of prairies of population rather than crowded cities. Of course it didn’t work, and later critics of his work have written that there is one main reason it didn’t: people like living in cities. They find them stimulating and interesting and full of vigor.

Sometimes I hate a crowd, like when I’m fighting to leave a parking garage after a sports event, or trying to find a parking place at the mall around the holidays. But I also enjoy some crowds, like at our local farmer’s market on a Saturday, where you rub shoulders with people of many ethnicities and cultures and styles. Such a rush of sights and smells, and such a cacophony of sounds, of various languages being used, of accents and discussions and arguments. One’s ears are assaulted, like the birds on a spring morning in the city, all quarreling and threatening and making a joyous noise of it all.

You can live in the country, and find peace, space, and time to think, and make little noise. Or you can live in the city, chockablock with ten thousand of your neighbors, and jostle and fight and cajole; butt in line and sneak an extra portion; or you can open the door for a stranger, and say hello and good morning to people you’ll never see again. Either way your song, the thing that you feel you need to say each morning when you get up, is likely to remain the same.

Naming Things

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Birdwatching, Calendar, Genesis, Meteorology, Seasons, Weather

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One Sunday morning a while back I walked out early and experienced a pretty sunrise. As I stood watching I was aware of birdsong swelling around me. Our property is a large area of cleared land surrounded on most sides by woods, and it felt like being in the midst of a symphony of song. But my mind, like so many people, quickly descends to the trivial, and within moments I was pestered by an old problem of mine.

I can’t name birds by their song. I mean, crows and owls, sure, and cardinals, I think, and who doesn’t recognize the screech of a hawk? But of all the dozens of sparrows, nuthatches, chickadees, woodpeckers, robins and starlings that inhabit these woods and fields, I can identify none of them by their song. I need to look online and find a guide to birdsong, or get a recording for in my car and listen to it while I commute, committing each song to memory. That would impress family and friends, wouldn’t it? ‘Ah, there’s the black-capped chickadee,’ I would say, casting a knowing glance to the west . . .

I read a birdwatching guide years ago, and one piece of advice stood out more than any other. When you spot a bird you do not know, it said, linger on the bird. Look at it as long as the bird stays still for you, and memorize things about it. What color are its feathers? Are they uniform, or are there different colors on the breast, the head, the tail or the tips of the wings? Is its beak straight or curved? Only after observing the bird for a good while, open the book and see if you can find it. Not only is this the best way to identify the bird, but it makes the experience of viewing the bird that much richer. What you are doing is watching birds, not naming birds. Yes, you will eventually want to discover the names of the birds you view, but not to the detriment of enjoying their beauty.

Naming things is a human prejudice. We do not know something until we have named it. In Genesis, God has no sooner created all the animals than he makes Adam sit down and name them. Why this naming of the animals is so crucial at this early point in creation is mystifying, let alone why God has Adam do it: unless we acknowledge that scripture is written by humans, and this passage in the Bible is us rationalizing not only our practice, but our God-given right to name all the things in nature.

As I have researched the seasons in human life, I have found people from many disciplines–geography, meteorology, philosophy, history–who insist that the seasons as we understand them don’t really exist. Yi-Fu Tuan, a Chinese-American geographer, said it well in his excellent (though difficult) book Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values: ‘In the middle latitudes temperature changes continuously in the course of a year but it is customary for people to divide it into four or five seasons, often with festivities marking the passage from one to the other.’

In other words, there are seasons largely because we see them that way, we name them, and thereby define them. In centuries past, we prayed and sacrificed to deities whose deaths and resurrections or sojourns in the Underworld governed the seasons. In modern times, when a season does not arrive on the date expected, we pretty much just complain about it. Which is odd, given the fact that there are different theories about what constitutes a season. To meteorologists, seasons begin on the first day of the first month in which that season’s temperature pattern predominates: thus March 1 to May 31 is spring. But to most of us, the seasons begin on the solstices and equinoxes. Neither of these schemes take into account the fluctuating weather we get around the beginning of each season. March can come in like a lion or a lamb. It’s often not until the middle of any season when we get that season and no other. But it does not stop us from slapping definitive names on them.

Yi-Fu Tuan calls it segmenting reality, dividing it into nameable portions that we can digest and understand bit by bit. A mountain sloping into a valley and thence out into a plain is also a continuum, unbroken in its run, but we have these different names for each part of it. Japanese people have a system of twenty-four sekki, or climatic segments of the calendar year: February 19 begins Rain Water, June 6 Grain in Ear, and September 7 White Dew. This is an ancient system, adopted from China, and one wonders how rarely climatic reality harmonizes with these lovely names.

Everything is an admixture of experience and intellectual exercise which creates an irony and a tension. I want to experience nature and the seasons; at the same time, running through my mind are these naming conventions that only detract from my pure experience. I am aware of this, but will likely not change. I still wish I could name each player in the symphony of birdsong.

Why No Pictures?

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Autumn, Birdwatching, Fall, Photography, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Travel, Winter

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I know that I am not a very good photographer, so I don’t own a camera and I don’t take many pictures. This doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the beauties of nature, or the sights of interesting places, or that I don’t want to remember good times with friends and family. It just means that I am not good at recording these things in photographic images. I have noticed that this doesn’t stop some people.

When people I know visit lovely places like Paris or Hawaii, they often come home with their vacation photos, including snapshots of the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, of palm trees swaying beside blue waters. These photographs do not compare favorably with professionally done images of the same things, and I wonder both why they bothered and why they think they would interest me. As a tradition, taking travel photographs is a hand me down from a time long ago when photography was new, cameras were rare, and most people had not seen images of the Eiffel Tower or the landscape of Maui. Nowadays it’s mostly just tiresome: people think they are supposed to take photos of their travels. I know a few people who are excellent photographers, who bring some verve and artistic sensitivity to the images they choose to share. But they are all too rare.

In working on this blog, I am often seeking images to use. Here’s a picture of spring; here’s a picture of winter. But what’s the point? People with cameras can’t seem to avoid recording images of the seasons, especially of seasonal change: the first forsythia to bloom in spring, a maple tree glowing with bright copper leaves, snow piled on anything. I mean, these images are beautiful and all that; but do I really need another photo of any of them? I also wonder if the mere act of snapping a photo is too facile a way of recording that image: if by taking the photo, we actually put it out of mind. Are we taking the time to think about the changes our cameras record?

There is a cliche you often encounter in movies and books (it was even lampooned in a funny scene in the movie Crocodile Dundee), that superstitious native peoples do not like to have their photographs taken, because they believe that it robs their souls. It seems a fitting metaphor for how I feel about taking a snapshot of something rather than spending a little more time experiencing it. Often when someone I know comes home from a vacation somewhere nice, they will ask, Do you want to see my pictures? Usually, my answer is no, but I would like to hear a good story. That always gets them thinking. Some people are a lot better than others at telling stories, but anyone who has truly experienced a new place should be able to tell me something interesting about it–unless they were too busy snapping pictures.

Once I was reading a book about birdwatching. It had hundreds of colorful and precise images of birds, to be used in identifying them. The introduction to the book contained tips on how to be a better birdwatcher. It advised that when you see a new and unknown species, you should not immediately pull out the book and try to find it on a page. You should instead spend as long a time as you can watching the bird. After all, the activity is called birdwatching, not bookwatching. And the longer you watch the bird, the better you will know it: does it have a crest on its head? A pointed or rounded beak? Long tail feathers? Are there unusual colors on its tail, head, throat or the tips of its wings? Only after you’ve observed the creature for a while, or after it has flown, should you open the book and seek a picture that matches what you were watching. But remember the key point: it’s about the experience, not about correctly naming it.

So I guess I’ll include an image in my blog when it is truly helpful or instructive, when it really helps to explain something. But if it’s just there so I can say I used a picture, then why bother? You haven’t seen enough pictures of daffodils? Of gathering storm clouds? Of rain?