Over the past few years it seems bird books have been enjoying a prolonged
moment in the limelight. I'm not talking about perennial favorites like field
guides, but rather the long list of titles devoted to birdwatching, birdwatchers
or living with birds. From Birding
Babylon, Sergeant Jonathan Trouern-Trend's surprising memoir of birding
while serving in Iraq, to the insanity of Luke Dempsey's A
Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See it All.
(See also The Big
Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik and
To
See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, A Son and A Lifelong Obsession by Dan
Koeppel) clearly the story of people who look for birds has become as
compelling, if not more so, than the animals themselves.
It is no surprise that there are a lot of nonfiction titles on birdwatching.
It is after all an inexpensive, exceedingly healthy and endlessly fascinating
hobby that certainly would see a resurgence in lean economic times. But birds
appearing in fiction is less expected and yet birdish titles are everywhere on
the literary shelves. Even though birds have little or nothing do with the
novels themselves. In the past two years alone we find In
Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefield (featuring an ornithologist and
bird artist), The Bird
Catcher by Laura Jacobs (a hobbyist who is "as rare and special as the
birds that fill the skies above her," and The
Nightingales of Troy, a series of linked stories by Alice Fulton that
doesn't seem to be about birds at all although they figure prominently on the
cover. Brad Kessler's Birds in
Fall is about an ornithologist grieving after her husband's death in a
plane crash. It explores mythic themes and, as quoted in Booklist, asks "How is
a story like a bird?" (Someone should contact Anne Lamont for the answer to that
one -- see Bird by
Bird for more info there.) Finally there is Lauren Groff's collection,
Delicate
Edible Birds whose title story is about a female war correspondent
during WWII. In each of these books (and the so many others like them titled in
a similar fashion), it is the idea of birds which conveys the author's meaning.
Clearly we all react to birds in a basic and visceral manner and further, we
want to read books that are in some slight or even metaphorical way about them.
In the broadest sense, Scott Weidensaul's Of A
Feather
takes readers through the entire history of American birding. While Audubon,
Peterson and all the other expected great names are here, there are many other
reasons why anyone interested in the subject should consider this a must-read.
Weidensaul begins by addressing birds in Native American myth, acknowledging
that birds figured predominantly in their history and traditional ornithology
was alive and well long before Europeans arrived on American shores. He recounts
Audobon's life with a lens turned deeply personal, revealing the many struggles
suffered by the artist and his family, including bankruptcy, the deaths of
children and the ever present worry over whether or not his dream (the future
classic Birds of
America) was worth it. From there he writes about dozens of other
lesser-known scientists and hobbyists who all left their mark on the field from
Elliott Coues who collected specimens across the west (and many numerous enemies
in the course of a turbulent but fruitful career) to Martha Maxwell, a self
taught taxidermist who revolutionized animal displays in spite of a career
adversely affected by her gender. (She was also the first woman with a bird to
bear her name, a subspecies of screech-owl she collected.)
Weidensaul recognizes that women quite famously contributed to the efforts to
save birds (and end the dreadful fashion of using feathers in hats -- something
they initiated). There is Florence Merriam, who he credits with writing, "in a
sense the first field guide to American birds" and an entire chapter on "Angry
Ladies" which features Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall who led an
opposition to the use of feathers and skins by the millinery trade. He also
writes about Rosalie Edge who founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, the first refuge
in the world for raptors. Weidensaul keeps the names and dates coming with the
turn of each page but he balances every fact with an anecdote, making the book a
sort of history that is both casual and direct -- and very readable. He also
plays a bit with pop culture, recalling Miss Hathaway, the spinster bird watcher
in the The Beverley Hillbillies and the struggle for coolness in a
hobby that does not engender a Steve McQueen-like image. But more than all of
that, he comes back to the necessity to keep conservation at the forefront of
any birding endeavor -- more so than racing to fill the life list. He looks
"beyond the list" in fact, to the current trend which hopefully will see the
return of the full swath of American ornithology: "science, sport and
conservation". Birding should never be simply about a tick mark on a list of
names but rather "a celebration of the creature that makes it all possible --
the small, contained miracle that is a bird."
Esther Woolfson would certainly agree with Weidensaul's conclusions, and
likely impress him with her dedication to birds. In Corvus: A
Life With Birds she discusses another trend among bird books: a memoir
of caring for birds that can not be released into the wild. Woolfson's case is a
bit more unusual than most as the birds that are part of her life (and her
Shirley Jackson-ish family) are corvids: rooks, crows, magpies and ravens. With
a wealth of mythic lore to support their supposedly evil tendency (damn you
Edgar Allen Poe!), the corvid is not the automatic choice for pet and Woolfson
makes clear that they do not see themselves as such either. One comes to terms
with a corvid -- agrees to share space with him -- but does not ever find him
"cute". He's too smart for that, and far too independent.
What makes Woolfson's memoir such enjoyable reading (even for the
non-bird-obsessed) is that she is funny and knows it's rather crazy to have a
magpie, crow, starling or most significantly a rook named "Chicken," running
about your house. But her affinity for birds is undeniable. After successfully
building a dovecote in her backyard she found herself becoming the recipient of
every ill or wounded wild bird her neighbors came across. Her family willingly
embarked on this Durrell-ish adventure with her as the birds were brought in,
nursed back to health and then enjoyed an often cage-free existence within the
home. Woolfson shares all of the chaotic beauty of life lived this way
(including the open-minded stance of one daughter who believes birds should
never be caged) while also delving deeply in the rich literary and scientific
history of corvids. The book is thus a unique blend of family humor and science,
nature study and hilarity. Although I can not imagine having birds flying about
my home with such abandon, Woolfson is happy to share hers with us providing the
inside scoop on a bird many readers know but few truly understand. Teens in
particular will enjoy this title and for Durrell fans it is an obvious must.
After reading about Rosalie Edge's work on Hawk Mountain, and reviewing Tim
Gallagher's falconry book, I was quite intrigued to come across Rachel
Dickinson's Falconer
on the Edge. Dickinson is married to Gallagher, although, as she
candidly admits, the notion of sharing a large portion of her life with raptors
never crossed her mind. She reveals a few insights about marriage to the sport
in this title but mostly she writes about Steve Chindgren, an extreme falconer
whose life is framed around the sport. Although happily married and a proud
father, Chindgren still leaves his home in Utah for months out of the year to
travel to Wyoming with his birds and dogs to hunt. This is not a weekend
adventure to him -- it is, to a large extent, everything. Dickinson is intrigued
by such commitment and also the unique relationship between man and bird.
Chindgren pushes himself, his dogs and his aging bird Jomo to continue the hunt
even though all of them are slowing down. He wants Jomo to go out in a glorious
moment -- doing what he loves best, just as he seems to long for the same ending
as well. Dickinson can't be entirely sure what she is seeing as she watches
Chindgren in action but she knows it is something far beyond the bounds of
typical human/animal interaction. It seems simplistic to say the man and the
bird are kindred spirits but they are bound beyond reason to each other and the
compulsive, all-powerful need to hunt.
Anyone writing about falconry, and the relatively large subculture of
participants it represents around the world, can not help but notice its deep
connection to nature and the wild. Dickinson spends time in Wyoming with
Chindgren and travels the oil fields to witness the impact of drilling on the
sage grouse. There is an ongoing battle in the state to keep the bird off the
endangered species list as that would affect drilling, which means affecting
jobs. Falconers rely on sage grouse as primary prey for their birds. They walk a
fine line between protecting birds that they need to thrive for their hunt. This
dip into political waters should broaden the appeal of Falconer on the
Edge to anyone intrigued by what goes on between levels of government that
affect one animal's future in one small location on the planet. By peering so
deeply into the life of this man and his sport, Dickinson finds herself studying
the very nature of the American West. Chindgren himself is conflicted by what he
finds while hunting with Jomo and the opinions of so many he encounters in
Wyoming. "Anything they think threatens their livelihood they want to get rid
of, and that's something that's passed on for generations and generations," he
says. But Dickinson clearly wonders what remains of that West as she drives
among the wells. And readers will ponder just what part of this new landscape is
iconically western, especially if it is at the expense of an animal like the
sage grouse that was here before anyone and anything else. All Chindgren wants
to do is keep flying birds, and what space there is for them in the 21st century
we can not know, nor can we understand just yet how important he and his birds
might be to both our past and our future.
The mother of all birding books, the one for poring over and gaping at, is
the rather titanic American
Museum of Natural History Birds of North America. Yes, it's a doorstop
and not one for throwing in the backpack while setting out on a hike. But if you
want the pictures big and colorful, if you want to see birds in flight and at
rest, from multiple angles, as adults and juveniles; if you want to really be
able to consider all of your identification options, then this is the one for
you. The authors provide descriptions that transcend color and size; from the
Green Heron, "a small, solitary, and secretive bird of dense thicketed
wetlands," to the Cory's Shearwater with its "slow, labored wing beats," care
has been placed in the choice and rhythm of words. You do not just receive facts
but beautifully written ones, along with a smattering of history, discussion of
discoverers, description of voice and nesting habits and location maps. Could
you find it all in a field guide or two (or perhaps several to cover all the
information), well yes. But even if you could, wouldn't you still rather like it
all in front of you, in all its glory, and so easy to enjoy? Yes, you must. As a
treat, as an example of devotion, this unwieldy, oversized, heavier-than-heck
Birds of North America is really not to be denied.
But of course, at the end of the day, the only truly indispensible birding
book is the field guide and there are literally hundreds to choose from
depending on region, type, information, presentation, etc. And yet finally, if
you want to immerse yourself in the glory of birds, if you really want to see
them on the printed page as something beautiful and elegant and in a few cases,
oddly strange, then you must seek out Andrew Zuckerman's Bird.
The follow-up to his equally dazzling Creature,
this collection of photographs captures only the birds, absent their habitat,
minus action, appearing almost like your great Aunt Gladys if Zuckerman could
have persuaded them to gape at the camera with impatient expressions. It is a
coffee table book which makes it sound like something to peruse while waiting
for an overdue date, but it's really much more -- the best blend of craft and
subject and something that brings home the message Scott Wiedensaul and all the
other bird lovers have made here: this is a wondrous creature and we need to do
what we can to save them. It might be trendy to put the word "bird" in a book
title but the responsible thing to do -- the enlightened 21st century thing --
is to pony up your money and your time and save them. Because they are birds;
and that is more than enough reason for anybody.
Smart Birds
Published: August 27, 2009
When she set out to write about the crow ? the black sheep of the avian world
? the naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt didn?t relish the task. ?I never meant to
watch crows especially,? she admits in her curiously personal and
thought-provoking meditation, ?Crow Planet.? ?Whenever I ask someone about
chickadees or robins or flickers or other common birds . . . the response is
almost always lackluster, noncommittal or at best blandly cheerful.? Crows,
however, sometimes elicit raves (?They are so intelligent! And beautiful!?), but
far more often insults (?loud,? ?poopy,? ?evil,? ?menacingly bold,? ?harbingers
of death?).
Did you know that crows recognize human faces? To prove this, she writes, a
researcher at the University of Washington conducted an experiment.
Volunteers who had captured and banded crows (something crows resent) while
wearing caveman masks were cawed at and dive-bombed whenever they re-entered
crow precincts. When the same volunteers walked through the crow zone with their
faces hidden by Dick Cheney masks, ?the crows left them entirely
alone.? (Presumably, this reflected no political bias.) Affectingly, Haupt
describes ?crow funerals? in which a ?stillness? settles around a deceased bird
as other crows ?cluster about the crow in perfect silence,? and records evidence
of crows at play ? basking in the sun, ?sprawled on one side with their wings
hanging open . . . like black-feathered Madame Bovarys? or catching falling
cherry blossoms. She knows that by publishing such observations, she risks
criticism from the scientific community: studies ?must not resort to anecdote?
or ?anthropomorphize their subject,? she scolds herself. And yet, she maintains,
she can?t faithfully portray the interlaced world of man and crow without
sharing such stories. She prefers the more open-minded, questing inquiry of
earlier students of the natural world like Thoreau and Louis Agassiz, and
patterns her own research technique on St. Benedict?s thoughtful reading
practice, allowing a ?contemplative flow? to settle upon her watching.
Like human beings, Haupt explains, crows are one of the ?few prominent,
dominant, successful species? that prosper in the modern world. Their hardiness
means they will outlast more fragile species. Before we revile them, she
suggests, we ought to understand that there are so many of them because there
are so many of us. Because we have built, they have come, and crows and humans
today must coexist in the ?zoöpolis,? the ?overlap of human and animal
geographies.?
In a lyrical narrative that blends science and conscience, Haupt mourns the
encroachments of urbanization, but cherishes the wildness that survives. She has
learned to appreciate, ?but not quite love,? the crow. And while she may
hesitate to anthropomorphize the bird, she is unable to avoid, in one instance,
caninifying it ? comparing a brood of fledglings who landed on her lawn and
uprooted her seedling carrots to playful Labrador puppies. She gently spritzed
the young crows with a hose, hoping they?d flutter away and spare her crop.
?Instead,? she writes, ?all four of them gathered under the spray, flapped their
wings and opened their bills, in what appeared to be absolute joy. I laughed,
but in that slightly imbalanced way that could turn into crying if someone
looked at me the wrong way.? Over the next few days, she brought out the hose
again so they could play some more. Perhaps, then, it?s time to update the
grisly collective noun (so unlike ?an exaltation of larks? or a ?paddling of
ducks?) that?s been applied to these birds: not a ?murder of crows? but a
?litter.? It?s an apt _expression_ in more ways than one.
Liesl Schillinger is a regular contributor to the Book Review.
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