Welcome to all the new subscribers! It was a real honor to have my What an Owl Knows essay featured in last week's Substack Reads email. It has been very gratifying to receive so much positive feedback. I look forward to sharing more bird- and garden-themed essays with a greatly expanded audience. Please feel free to comment on my writing. I appreciate the feedback. It helps me choose topics to write about, and it keeps me inspired.
My relationship with birds is changing. I used to be content to consider myself a birdwatcher, but a story in The Power of Myth prompted me to take a different view. This book shares a long conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. At the end of the introduction, Bill relays one of Joseph Campbell's favorite stories. Joseph attended an international religious conference in Japan where he overheard a social philosopher from New York talking to a Shinto priest: "We've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines. But I don't get your ideology. I don't get your theology." The priest paused, looked down, and replied, "I think we don't have an ideology; we don't have theology. We dance. "
This is how I think of birdwatching. It can be much more than just watching. I often feel like I am dancing with the birds. I follow their lead as I stand nearby and observe. This time of year, I walk the trails in our local urban park and stop near dogwood, viburnum, elderberry, and spicebush shrubs to see which birds are in the neighborhood. When I find birds feeding on berries, I slowly approach the shrub and observe the bird's behavior to gauge how close I can get. Some birds are more sensitive than others. Gray Catbirds and Robins are bold and will let you get close. Swainsons, Gray-cheeked, Hermit, Wood Thrushes, and Veeries are more sensitive and will often hide in dense cover when you approach. These thrushes are always watching with their large, dark eyes. I watch them watching me and try to discern if I can move closer. This is part of the dance.
One of the benefits of being patient and getting to know your dance partners is that you get to listen to their conversations behind the scenes. They will occasionally sing a whisper song this time of year. They sit in the shadows with their bill half open and sing a low-volume version of their song. This subtle, ethereal beauty from the north permeates the woods with wildness.
The subtle whit whit calls of the thrushes will often emerge from the leaves around you. You may be the topic of conversation. They are trying to decide if they want to dance. Once you learn to identify the subtle calls, you realize there are moments when you are surrounded by birds, but most of them remain out of sight. If you listen closely, you can discern that the same call can be delivered more or less emphatically. Much information is passed between the birds.
In our popular urban park, the dance involves a diverse cast of characters. We all have our routines, and the experience can feel choreographed. Twenty percent of the park is a wooded area; the rest is devoted to playgrounds, sports fields, and mowed grass. This forest is one of the few natural areas in town and is often full of birds and people. Dogwalkers, cross-country runners, volunteers performing restoration work, and families with kids heading to the playground are all on the trails. If you want to get close to birds, you have to learn which areas of the park contain the best habitat with the fewest people.
In our park, habitat quality is in a constant state of flux. Volunteers and park staff have carefully managed the plant community in the woods for the past fifty years. This sets the stage for the big spring and fall dances, when the greatest number of people and birds interact at the park during migration. The park is essentially a large backyard tended by the community. Without these volunteers, this area would be a thicket of the most common aggressive plants, and its value for wildlife would be greatly diminished.
One plant in particular constantly threatens native plant diversity and birds. Asian Bush Honeysuckle is an aggressive exotic shrub that dominates wooded areas and excludes most native plants. If not physically removed or controlled with prescribed fire, it tends to outcompete most other plants by leafing out early and casting dense shade throughout the growing season.
Most people see these thickets and think they are suitable habitat for birds, but they are not. The architecture of the shrub is such that predators have clear views into the canopy, and as a result, predation rates on bird nests are higher in honeysuckle shrubs. The bright red honeysuckle berries are another conundrum. They look like they would be good food for the birds but are akin to junk food. They are essentially soda for birds.
Migrating birds need fat for energy, which is where caterpillars and native berry-producing shrubs come into play. Honeysuckle berries are 3% fat, while Spicebush berries are 40% fat. This is why the birds have such a strong preference for native berries. They will only eat the honeysuckle berries when native berries are not available.
I have enjoyed joining the volunteers in the park for the past four years. We cut the exotic plants back with loppers and saws and pull out the honeysuckle with long-handled tools that grab it at the base so you can pull down and pop the shrub out of the ground. Once we have cleared an area, we spread native plant seeds. Now, the stage is set for the return of native plants and birds.
This work is very engaging and gratifying. When you release the native shrubs from competition with honeysuckle, they respond with vigorous new growth and produce more berries. This attracts more birds that eat the berries and spread them throughout the park and surrounding area. This virtuous cycle requires constant input from people to maintain it. Without people, the native plants disappear. With our help, the native plants start to spread and gain ground. You can foster this dynamic by planting native plants in your yard. When they mature and start producing seeds and fruit, you will begin to see them pop up around your neighborhood. These pioneering plants hold great promise. They are the beginning of an interconnected network of native vegetation that nurtures wildlife and supports delicate threads of connection.
When you set the stage for the birds by providing them with native plants, they will miraculously appear. Even the thrushes, which tend to be furtive and standoffish, will show up.
Thrush Love
In an attempt
To make my worn suburban
Surroundings more Thrush-Philic
I've let things go past "maintenance."
Let things grow beyond containers
or neat bed borders
Opened the door
To what some would call "weeds”
Welcomed all feathered things olive-backed and skulky.
Rolled out a welcome mat of disarray.
Made glimpses of pieces
and parts of what might be,
the priority.
I've let the dank rank higher than bright
Encouraged shadows to persist
at all hours.
Let snails have right of way?
Asked the olive–backed birds
If warblers and other night travelers might find
Such an il-kempt place to their liking.
Ferns, four-o'clocks, sumac, poke salad
And yes, even un-American things like privet
Find function here,
So long as the trans-gulf travelers approve.
Gray cheeked-esque, Swainsonii-like
Or wood-ishness not withstanding,
Could a Bicknell find my spot inviting?
But then, I would only know
If it chose to speak.
My goal in enhancing thrushiness
has not been to increase any lists,
but more simple want, desire,
wish.
To be a spot on the map below
starlit transit,
that by dawn is worthy of
A pause to snatch a nap's wink
Or late worm.
A link in some chain of a chance to make it
further South
To perhaps return again.
J. Drew Lanham.
Getting to know the thrushes can make you curious. Where did they come from? Where are they going? How do they navigate and survive such a long and arduous journey? It turns out that there is something beautiful and enigmatic happening within their minds. This beauty is highlighted by research into Veeries, which shows they can predict hurricanes.
Christopher Hecksher is an ornithologist in Delaware who has been studying Veeries for the past twenty years and recently discovered that they can predict the severity of the hurricane season months in advance. Their predictions are equal to or, in some cases, more accurate than the best models humans can produce. Veeries overwinter in South America and breed in the northern US. This means they are flying across the Gulf Of Mexico in the spring and fall, with their fall migration coinciding with peak hurricane season in August through October.
Veeries adjust their breeding activities and migration based on this understanding of broad weather patterns. In years with severe hurricanes, Veeries initiate nesting earlier, lay fewer eggs, and depart on fall migration earlier to avoid flying over the ocean during a hurricane. This means they have experienced something during the time on their wintering grounds that has alerted them to the fact that the following fall hurricane season will require altered migration timing. Bird migration is remarkable in many respects, and now we know about this additional layer of complexity that shows that birds are tuned into global weather patterns.
The earth is an exquisitely balanced system composed of delicate threads of connection that we cannot see. We have a role to play, supporting these delicate threads and weaving them together into a web of life. All we have to do is get to know the birds and learn how to dance.
…. To really know a bird you cannot be one of those busy red dust men, rushing and scurrying, eating up the world like a deranged termite. To really know a bird, you have to slow down. You have to slow down to Bird Time. You have to slow down to the rhythm of the feathered ones. To really know a bird you have to become one; and to become one you have to embrace the bird-part of your own dreamingbody- the part that sees and sings and knows how to fly, the part that knows the holiness of idleness, the part that is intimate with clouds and updrafts, the part that is aware-but-fearless, the part that knows of spiraling and tumbling, the part in-tune-always-in-tune with the vast bounty gained by silently sitting in the rain.
Talk to a poet about all this. They'll tell you, I'm sure, that to know a bird, you have to become a bird, and to become a bird, you have to enter the bird. You have to enter the bird to know what a bird knows. You have to shift your shape to understand ancient bird philosophy. To know a bird, to really know a bird, you have to embrace what the bird knows. When you do, then you are free.
Frank Inzan Owen
The poems in this essay were taken from the new book Dawn Songs: A Birdwatchers Field Guide to the Poetics of Migration by Jamie K. Reaser and J. Drew Lanham.
The book What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World by Jon Young is another great resource for learning more about deep bird language and how to get close to birds.
What a lovely nudge to get out on the trail this morning! The portraits you share of these intricate beings are simply gorgeous. Thanks, Bill.
I certainly learned something today reading this! Asian Honeysuckle; that grows wild near my fence line--your days are numbered. I live on 13 acres at the delightful end of a road where I am the last house. I have been dancing here with birds for 24 years. Oh the bird stories and their antics I could tell! I too have allowed a lower field near the stream to wild out and am planting native flowers and shrubs. Spice bush is next on my list thanks to your post.