“… the light birds, with no soul but air …”
11th century, translated by W. H. Auden
I am a serious birder. (I call my hobby “birdlookingfor” rather than “birdwatching” because often I’m just staring at a tree.) When people start talking about sports statistics or videogames or however else they spend their time, I usually just think about birds.
Paying attention to birds isn’t voluntary, and I can’t turn it off. I can’t not notice a bird. As I write this, I am sitting in a place where two wood thrushes are giving me a concert, a loud robin and a Carolina wren have just piped up, and the tiny gnatcatchers have been chattering away all day. (Unfortunately, I can also hear leafblowers, but I am inside the city limits of Washington, DC, so it’s not unexpected.) Make no mistake: this is solitude. “To be all alone in a little cell” is fine, yes, but this also – to be outside with deer and wild birds and a rabbit and no face mask because no humans are in sight – is another kind of hermitage.
I’m known for being good with birdsongs. Some people attribute that to the fact that I’m a musician. I’m not sure how big a factor that is, but it certainly doesn’t hurt that my ears are trained to pick out my own part when there’s a whole orchestra playing around me, or to hold my own singing in an ensemble where everyone sings a different part.
I’ve enjoyed recording and listening to birdsongs, as well, and I was recently interviewed for a piece by Kathi Borgmann of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology about the recordings I’ve contributed, as a citizen scientist, to the media archive of their excellent Macaulay Library. Analysis of these recordings has helped our burgeoning understanding about how different birds learn songs and how some have changed over the years. (You can listen to wood thrushes all day at the Macaulay Library, and might I suggest that it would be quite a good use of your time.)
I think more than anything, though, I’ve studied. I have often heard an unfamiliar bird in the field and transcribed its song as closely as I can, using approximate pitches, contours, character, and even human words. Then I’ve gone home and dug through first books and now internet resources to try to figure it out. It’s like a mystery to be solved, and I’ve learned by doing. (By doing and failing a lot before finally succeeding.)
We know that birds sing as a way to establish and defend their territory, to attract mates, and to make their presence known to their partners or flocks. I don’t think it hurts one bit to think of their songs as also praising their creator, as told in “The Praises of God.” At the very least, this sentiment could remind us how to live lives of thanksgiving for what we have (even if the leafblowers are annoying).
A bird also appears in Barber’s “Crucifixion,” the only one of the Hermit Songs to make it into regular church services, usually around Holy Week. It is a haunting song, and although I have sung it in church, to me it has felt almost too personal to sing in a liturgical setting. It’s like a private devotion rather than a piece for public worship. There is a bit of a plot twist at the end of this song, when we realize that it is about Mary. There is a bit of a birdsong motive throughout in the piano. I have no idea whether Barber had a specific bird in mind, but the one that sings from the piano part as “the cry of the first bird” sounds to me like an Eastern (rufous-sided) towhee. Judge for yourself.
I could talk about birds all day, but I’d rather share somthing else with you: my 2019 album Up Toward the Sky, which was originally released only as a physical CD, is now available on just about every streaming platform. (I’d still love for you to have a CD since you’ll get my program notes and the texts, but if you’re a streamer, you now at least have access to the music.) The album has several premiere recordings and highlights the musical and poetic voices of women and LGBT Americans. It’s loosely based around a bird theme, too, with songs about owls, thrushes, blackbirds, meadowlarks, juncos, sparrows, and even a mythical phoenix. I had an awful lot of fun picking out the songs, and I hope you’ll enjoy them as well.
Before you go, please enjoy these exceedingly amazing photos of birds, courtesy of the 2020 Audubon Photography Awards.
