Arriving at our backyard “sit spot,” Jade and I didn’t have
to wait long before the familiar chickadee duo appeared in a nearby thicket and
began chirping happily. A male robin patrolling his territory wasn’t far behind,
his pulsing crimson breast pumping out a gorgeous melody. Next to emerge,
seemingly out of thin air, was a pair of song sparrows, who began a staccato of
“seep-seep” calls. “I’m here.” “Yes, I’m here too.”
Suddenly, like a lighting strike, the calm morning was
upended. The chickadees flew to a higher branch. All the birds switched to
high-pitched alarm calls, echoed by other birds previously unseen. A host of
avian eyes peered downward, searching. Somewhere in the underbrush, a predator
had arrived . . .
Three years ago, I began work on a book about connecting
people with nature. I must confess that, at the beginning, I felt a certain sense
of self-satisfaction, convinced that a lifetime of outdoor play, hiking, and
camping—including, cumulatively, years spent living in tents in remote places while
digging dinosaur fossils—had forged within me a deep bond with nature. But researching this book destroyed that
perception. Instead, I found that, like most of us, I was quite oblivious to
the natural goings-on around me. Indeed I often impacted these events in
negative ways.
My insights came in
part from reading about “bird
language,” the acquired skill of understanding the meaning of local animals’
calls and movements. Championed by expert naturalist, tracker, and mentor Jon
Young, bird language offers a powerful tool to heighten our awareness of, and
connection with, nature [1-3]. Throughout almost all of human history, people
were fluent in the local dialect of bird language because it was a matter of
life and death. A bird’s call might lead you to your next meal, or prevent you
from becoming some other animal’s meal.
Earlier this year, I decided it was time for me to learn bird language,
and my ten year-old daughter Jade decided to join in on the fun. Our guide for
the journey was Jon Young’s excellent 2012 book, What the Robin Knows [1]. By the end of the first month of regular
visits to our backyard sit-spot, Jade and I were beginning to see the
neighborhood differently. For one thing, those nameless little feathered
creatures chirping in the trees were transforming into distinct species, each
with a unique voice and character. Our journals soon included such entries as,
“Pair of chickadees singing in thicket to west,” and “Four European starlings
sitting in Monterey Pine to the south.” Through diligent awareness (aided by a
pair of binoculars and a birding app on my iPhone), we were beginning to see
and hear more.
Although birds are nearly ubiquitous outdoors, rarely do we
stop and consider what they’re doing, or why they’re doing it in that spot and
not another. Because we’ve forgotten what it’s like to hunt or be hunted, our
implicit assumption is that birds are a lot like us, moving about almost
randomly. But for most animals, predator and prey, random behavior offers a
fast track to premature death. If you’re a North American songbird, predators
come in various shapes and sizes, and threaten from multiple directions. Foxes
and cats prowl the ground. Raccoons and ravens raid nests in trees. Hawks and
owls attack from the air. Most feared of all, it seems, are accipters like the
Cooper’s hawk, a common but rarely seen assassin befitting the title, “Death
from Above.” Cooper’s hawks are experts at killing birds on the wing, diving
fearlessly into trees and thickets.
No surprise then that most birds have small territories that
they know intimately, and tend to follow the same paths through these spaces.
Along with understanding local geography, those robins, wrens, and ravens are
fluent in bird language. Always vigilant, they listen continually for alarm
calls, and not just from their own kind. A robin will react to the alarm of a
song sparrow and vice versa. For the same reason, squirrels and rabbits know
bird language too. The end result is a vast web of awareness that generates a
local, ever-shifting “mood.” If the mood is relaxed, “baseline” behaviors such
as feeding and song dominate. If things turn tense, alarms will sound, silence
may ensue, and animals often flee. Although we tend to ignore our neighborhood
avians, it turns out that the birds know us, and our pets. Why? Because it’s a
matter of life and death. Local birds even react in predictable ways to our
behaviors. We simply fail to notice.
But Jade and I are starting to take note. We’ve learned that
the way we walk to our sit spot—slow and relaxed instead of hurried—can greatly
reduce the time it takes for the birds to resume their baseline behavior. The
biggest challenge in becoming adept at bird language, we found, is getting to
know this baseline for a variety of local birds. Each species uses several
different vocalizations, from melodious songs and subtle companion calls to
boisterous territorial squawking and, in the case of hungry babies, impatient
screams. Only by gaining firsthand understanding of this background behavior can
one begin to detect disturbances that might indicate a predator’s presence.
Yet, even with just a few weeks practice under our belts,
Jade and I found our awareness expanding, and with it our sense of appreciation
and even empathy. When familiar birds are absent during our sit-spot sessions,
we wonder what they’re up to. And we find ourselves slowing down more often as
we enter and exited the house, listening for signs of the neighborhood “mood.”
Wildness just outside the front door is helping us deepen our bond with nature.
These interactions, I have come to realize, are essential to nature connection.
If we are going to foster in our children (and ourselves) that all-important
sense of internal wildness, we must first have abundant experience of external
wildness.
Jade and I are looking forward to becoming more fluent in
bird language in the coming year, and using these new skills to identify and
actually catch sight of local predators.
What will you do in 2013 to connect yourself and others with
nature?
Notes and References
1. Young, Jon. 2012. What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.
2. Young, J., E. Haas, and E. McGown. Coyote’s Guide To Connecting With Nature,
Second Edition. OWLink Media,
Shelton, WA.
3. Website: http://birdlanguage.com/
Image Credits (top to bottom)
1) Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve
2) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3) www.ronrink.com
