Just now, a house finch came to see me. I was in the backyard, eating last night’s chicken and radishes, a little kimchi on the side. So you get an idea of the weather, it’s warm out but not heat dome hot, quite pleasant really. The finch sat in my neighbor’s lilac tree and sang his song. Chirps and whistles. I know it’s a male because he had red markings on his head and down his back to his tail. He whistled and then more whistles were returned, and I realized three females surrounded him on lower branches. The females have the same song but are brown in color, no red. I stood up and walked over to them. If you stand very still and pretend like you are the landscape, not a human, but a part of the natural world, not a predator, just neutral, birds will let you get close. At least, they tend to let me get pretty close. Soon a California scrub-jay joined them on the fence below the lilacs. The six of us hung out for a few minutes, birds chirping up a storm, me just standing there, and then they flew off.
Bye, bye, birds.
I’ve always been fascinated by birds. I mean, I wrote a novel about one. When I was in my twenties, I used to tell my wife that I couldn’t wait to be older, so I could finally get into birdwatching. One young spring day, when I was newly sober, they drove us to Forest Park for a surprise. The road through Forest Park climbs, and the woods grow tight, dense. Back then, everything felt raw, too vibrant. I missed the dullness booze brought, how it made everything less sharp and easier to swallow. We pulled into the parking lot for the Audubon Society and the surprise was revealed. Stelleaux told me they were fed up. “No more waiting until you’re older. You can start watching birds now.” We walked over to the small cabin-like building, where I had a million questions for the woman at the info desk.
I wanted to know how to get started. How do I even begin a relationship with birds?
Turns out, there’s no clear-cut path to beginning birding. She offered a field guide for birds of Western North America. She recommended YouTube videos that could teach the basics, how to tell what kind of bird it is by how it acts. Is it alone on the ground, scrounging for bugs? Is it with others, foraging for fruit in a tree? I was frustrated. I like a clear path, something well-defined with steps I can follow until one day, BAM, I can name birds in the area simply by hearing their call.
“Just notice the world around you,” the woman advised. “Use the internet. It’ll start to make sense.”
I stepped out of the information room and onto the observation deck. The building is nestled deep in the woods with trails that weave through the tall pines. A large binder full of information on IDing birds was hooked to the railing. A dark blue bird, black on its head, flew to land on the railing a ways down the deck. It wore its feathers in a mohawk. I opened the binder and there it was on the first page: a Steller’s jay. My first ID was a freebie.
I know as a writer, I’m supposed to be observant, but before I got sober, I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on around me, happier instead to live with my dulled sense of self and my own inner life. The first year of sobriety, it was hard for me to pause and listen. The world was too much, too fast. Birds gave me something to focus on, to ease the way the sober world cut.
One afternoon, Stelleaux and I pulled into our driveway in the middle of a rainstorm. We turned off the car and listened to the rain pound the hood until it stopped pouring. Immediately, a flock of birds began diving in our yard. Black bodies with flecks of white down their backs. I looked it up on my phone. European starlings. In the late 19th century, a man named Eugene Schieffelin decided that every bird mentioned in a Shakespeare play should be introduced to Central Park. European Starlings appear in Henry IV. The birds are invasive and decimate woodpecker and robin communities by kicking them out of their nests but watching the birds cover our car and yard as they searched for newly uncovered bugs was magic.
There’s an Anna’s hummingbird that visits me at my studio window nearly every day. (They can recognize humans and will come say hi if they know you.) Lately, our serviceberry tree has been frequented by cedar waxwings enjoying the fresh fruit. Some nights, a barn owl flies overhead, screeching in the sky. Every spring either a downy or a hairy woodpecker (I’m not sure which) lands on our roof and drums away at our aluminum chimney, maybe mistaking it for a tree trunk, maybe just trying to freak out the pugs. At sunset, I can walk to the meditation center a few blocks away and watch thousands of crows circle. They’ve been roosting here for generations, a crow city.
The world is not so sharp anymore. Or my spirit is stronger without alcohol. Either way, I’m more awake to the world around me. I’ve spent the last few years with my eyes peeled to the sky or deep in tree branches, looking for new birds to recognize. It’s opened me more to the natural world. The fruit bats that fly at dusk. The Oregon swallowtails that flit from flower to flower. Watching birds has taught me how to watch people too, how to slow down and really feel what it’s like to be an animal on this planet. I can sit quietly at the edge of the community garden, right were the woods start, and I can be quiet for a long time, just listening and watching. I can go to a restaurant and order a bubbly water and watch other people on first dates or out with their friends, no need to stifle my experience. The world, it doesn’t sting like it used to.
A Spell for Watching Birds
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. Quiet. Look over there, out your window. See that bird in your neighbor’s tree? Don’t try to figure out what it is yet. Simply watch it. What’s its back look like? Head? See how its talons wrap around the branch? That’s not important for IDing the bird, but it is important for knowing how this bird feels, understanding her magic. Listen to her song. Really listen to it. Understand that you can speak bird. What is she saying to you? Maybe she’s saying everything will work out in the end, that losing your job was the only way to get you to this better thing. Perhaps she’s simply saying you look beautiful tonight. She might be telling you she’s hungry or lost or really, really happy. Get up now and walk slowly to the window. Walk in a way that says you’re not a threat, that you just want to know her. Watch her wings. Sit in communion. Whoop. There she goes!