I wouldn't describe myself as a birder. That to me implies owning high-end binoculars, planning vacations around migratory patterns, trying to find that one bird that eludes me with a persistence that baffles other humans. Having recently watched "The Residence" with the wonderful Uzo Aduba as a consulting detective who applies the skills of a passionate birder to her examination of human nature, I know I'm not that.
I don't have to be a birder to enjoy looking for, listening to, watching birds. (Just as you don't have to be a self-described "avid cyclist" to enjoy a bike ride!) I've always thought they were amazing and beautiful, always looked up when I caught a glimpse of winged shapes overhead out of the corner of my eye. Seems to me there's something in all of us that wants to soar.
In 2013 living for a while in a house that had a tree right outside the front window led to purchase of a bird feeder and a bird book for identification. Sweet Hubs entered fully into this new activity, looking up birds when he saw them and marking the date seen. We were both thrilled a while back to spot a kingfisher in the Budd Bay inlet we walk along as we head toward downtown and the farmers' market, love seeing a blue heron standing in the shallows, a patient fisher.
He started calling crows my "corvid escorts" at some point because of course we see them on every walk. I do love crows, and pre-COVID I had the incredible opportunity to go on a trip that included time in London so I saw the ravens at the Tower of London.
Our yard has a bird bath, a hummingbird feeder on the back deck, multiple feeders in the tree outside my home office window (yay, another house with a tree right there to let me watch them swoop and land!). As I record delights in my journal I often have notes about bird songs or sightings. Just the other day a Steller's jay and a robin had some sort of altercation on the wing just as I stepped out our front door, flashing across our little cul-de-sac with a lot of sound and fury. The jay landed in the neighbor's hawthorn tree while the robin swooped in to sit in the middle of the road. I think the robin won.
The book Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds* crossed my path after I had started my own collection. Edited by Billy Collins and illustrated by David Allen Sibley, it's a beautiful work. Highly recommend and I don't think I have many duplicates here. Later I found The Poets Guide to the Birds*, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, another wonderful collection that you're most likely to find from a bookseller who sells used books. My poetry book collection grows and grows alongside my appreciation of our fine feathered friends.
"Crows"
Mary Oliver
Crow is crow, you say. What else is there to say?
"Canto for the Chestnut-Eared Laughingthrush"
Hai-Dang Phan
Hidden somewhere in that mystery must be
Our very own Chestnut-eared Laughingthrush.
Garrulax konkakinhensis was our day’s journey
And query, who appeared in our dreams calling.
"Fifty Robins"
Amber Coverdale Sumrall
The first robins of winter descend like drunken paratroopers;
I imagine they’ve been feasting on fermented pyracantha berries
the way they drop, woozy and chortling, to the ground,
gleefully snagging drowning worms from the saturated soil.
"Evening Walk, Mid-March"
Sarah Busse
But the sky is full of occasion—robins.
Robins invisible
in the still-bare trees, twittering, chirruping
cheerily around the entire suburban block.
It couldn't be called song,
that curiously bubbling chatter-sound they make,
waxy and bibulous as a pubhouse or bridal shower.
"Baby Wrens"
Thomas R. Smith
I am a student of wrens.
When the mother bird returns
to her brood, beak squirming
with winged breakfast, a shrill
clamor rises like jingling
from tiny, high-pitched bells.
"Sixty Years Later I Notice, Inside A Flock Of Blackbirds,"
David Allan Evans
as the flock suddenly
rises from November stubble,
hovers a few seconds,
closing, opening,
"Great Blue Heron"
T. Allan Broughton
.... I’ve seen
his slate blue feathers lift him as dangling legs
fold back, I’ve seen him fly through the dying sun
and out again, entering night, entering my own sleep.
"Once" by Tara Bray
.... The heron stood
stone-still on my spot when I returned.
And then, his wings burst open, lifting the steel-
blue rhythm of his body into flight.
"Our Heron"
Willam Olsen
Then a heron. Pulled forward by fish, the baiting saint of the shallows.
"Not Knowing Why"
Ann Struthers
Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings,
lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger.
What danger on this island in the middle
of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel
the lift of wind under their iridescent wings,
because they were born to fly,
"Poor Patriarch"
Susie Patlove
The rooster pushes his head
high among the hens, trying to be
what he feels he must be, here
in the confines of domesticity.
Before the tall legs of my presence,
he bristles and shakes his ruby comb.
"The Birds"
Linda Pastan
as they swoop and gather—
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.
"Praise Them"
Li-Young Lee
The birds don’t alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace.
"Waking Up"
David Allan Evans
We wake up again to the sound
of those same birds just
outside our window. I can’t
name them, wouldn’t need to
if I could,
* That's a Bookshop affiliate link just in case you don't have a local bookstore or library. Any commission I receive from book sales will be donated to organizations working for safer, human-friendly streets and transportation equity. Making it safer for people to walk and bike is good for the birds, too, since those are the cleanest and greenest forms of transportation.
