Birds

RUN! entires tagged with birds.

Exercise: A Deck Do-Nothing

On a sunny day in early spring when the warmth is welcome, and the fresh air is too (having being trapped in the house for weeks), you sit on your deck in a chair. You sit there and do nothing–well, not exactly nothing. You listen to the birds, counting the number of sounds added to a bird’s trill each time it repeats its song. Six. Eight. Ten. Twelve. Comparing the different calls that mimic laughter, a frantic high-pitched giggle, a low-rumbling guffaw. Reflecting on why that screeching noise is so delightfully irritating. Wondering if that bzzzzzzz is a bird or a saw. Marveling at the magnificence of these birds. Sit. Stare. Do nothing for at least 20 minutes or until the shadow from the house chills the deck. Go inside. Write about these birds without turning them into metaphor or messengers or saviors. Craft a poem in which the birds get to do nothing. 

Inspired by these ideas:

Be with the bird

But over time, when we relax into a thing and maybe just being with a bird, then your brain kind of relaxes, it loosens, and things soak in. And I think that’s the key with a lot of learning. But not getting the name right immediately does not in any way diminish their ability to appreciate “the pretty,” as Aldo Leopold talks about. And so seeing that bird and saying, “Oh my God, what is that? Look at it,” and you’re looking at it, and you can see all of these hues, and you can watch its behavior, and you may hear it sing — well, in that moment, it’s a beautiful thing, no matter what its name is.

Sometimes, what I try to get people to do is to disconnect for a moment from that absolute need to list and name, and just see the bird. Just see that bird. And you begin to absorb it, in a way, in a part of your brain that I don’t know the name of, but I think it’s a part of your brain that’s also got some heart in it. And then, guess what? The name, when you do learn it, it sticks in a different way.

On Being episode with Drew Lanham

Being with the bird (or the tree or the river or whatever else is beside you) is another way of knowing that slowly sinks in and involves “a part of your brain that’s also got some heart in it.” It’s a shift away from the drive to know (to conquer, to possess) and towards a desire to feel and connect. Knowing not as mastering, but becoming acquainted with, getting to know.

Let the bird be

…to caretake with subject matter, to, what is it to say, okay, does this bird want to be in this poem today? Maybe it doesn’t. You know, we always want to turn the animal into something else, right. And sometimes I want to let the animal be. Of course animals are symbols, of course they turn into our metaphors. I mean, that happens. But I also think there are moments when you just think, okay, the birds aren’t going to save me.

They’re not a metaphor for me coming out of this. What I can do with them is to watch them and pay attention and bow down to their quietude, and their exactitude and smallness. But I can’t ask of them everything.

VS Podcast Interview with Ada Limón

Notice, admire, find delight in the bird without making them do the heavy work of your writing.

Bird Things Studied
  • bird poems
  • birdsong and mnemonic devices for recognizing them
  • songs with birds in them
  • birding by ear
  • the “Warbler’s Wave” in mid to late May
  • the singularity of seeing a bird vs. the multiplicity of hearing birds
  • bird (as) metaphor
  • bird physiology
  • bird names, the racists who did the naming, and the activists/poets/ornithologists working to change the names
  • ways of being with a bird that don’t involve staring or naming or identifying or knowing
  • life lists and what birds “count” on them
  • birds as predators and parasites
  • bird nests
  • bird watching jargon
  • birdwatchers and bird-pointer-outers
  • bird navigation and quantum mechanics
  • birds that fly high, birds that dive deep, birds that hardly ever stop flying, birds that can’t fly at all
  • the “essence” of a bird
  • bird vision
  • the Sufi poem “The Conference of the Birds” and the valley of bewilderment
  • birds who are wronged in poems and the metaphors inspired by them (the albatross/”The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

new (to me) birds identified by ear: the red-breasted nuthatch, yellow-rumped warbler

a bird to look out for in late summer: redstars (“in late summer, redstarts visit plants with small berries and fruits, such as serviceberry “)

a bird I saw close-up several times: the black and white and tiny downy woodpecker

the best first sentence of a poem: from The Heron/ Ted Kooser

Maybe twenty yards out from the shoreline
a great blue heron waiting, motionless,
upon a post that seemed to have no purpose
other than to stand there stained with rings
of history as the old lake, breathing sunlight,
rose and fell.

Poems Gathered
some useful bird facts 
  • Crows “caw”, ravens “cronk.” Crows flap awkwardly, ravens skim gracefully.
  • The three little birds in Bob Marley’s song, “Don’t Worry,” might be a reference to three canaries that greeted him most mornings, or his three back-up singers.
  • Some scientists believe that birds navigate by seeing (albeit in brief flashes) the magnetic field when light hits light-sensitive proteins (cryptochromes) found in their retinas.
  • The albatross has the largest wing span of birds: 11-12 feet. 
  • An oven bird is called an oven bird because its nest looks like an old-fashioned oven with one big round hole for an entrance. A cowbird is called a cowbird because it follows cows (or buffalos) and eats the bugs that fly up in their wake. Cowbirds seem like terrible birds; the mother drops her eggs in the nest of another type of bird to be looked after and when the cowbird eggs hatch, they take all of the food from their foster mother. Sometimes they push other bird babies out of the nest or smother them. 
  • “Water, water, everywhere/nor any drop to drink” (but not a drip to drink) comes from Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” first written in 1797, then heavily revised in 1817.
some useful bird links

I found a fascinating (and exciting) article about how the American Ornithological Society is renaming a huge amount (6-7% of US and Canadian species) of birds in order to move away from birds named after (racist) humans. Very cool! These American Birds and dozens more will be renamed, to remove human monikers

Some Bird Exercises and Activities
  • Find a poem about a bird and read it closely. Pick out all of the bird names and bird related words that you don’t know and look them up on allaboutbirds.org. Listen to their songs and calls, read about their quirky habits and how and if they migrate. Watch a video of them flying or feeding or singing. Delight (and/or annoy) others with all of the fascinating facts you have learned.
  • When out running or walking by the gorge, listen to the “Look!” you are offered by another kind walker wanting to point out a soaring eagle or a drumming downy woodpecker. Later, offer your own “Look!” to someone else.
  • Memorize part or all of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Endure strange looks and questions like, “Why would you want to do that?” Recite it to someone, anyone, who is willing to listen. Bonus: Later, listen to Iron Maiden’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and marvel at how glad you are to be the sort of person who would find memorizing this poem, and unexpectedly encountering Iron Maiden’s 13 minute interpretation of it, fun.

Discovered this great podcast episode about birding while blind: