A bird called by any other name is just as fun to watch!

I’ve been watch­ing birds lately—not birding—just bird watch­ing. Instead of an inten­sive study of flash­cards and a deep dive into field guides, I’ve just been watch­ing them. I often don’t know the name of the species, whether they’re migrat­ing or res­i­dents, and I cer­tain­ly don’t have an ear for their songs. But, who bet­ter to tell me about who a bird is? The being or a book?

Well, it’s both—ha!

A bird book is filled with cumu­la­tive obser­va­tions made by humans with a cer­tain amount of famil­iar­ly and exper­tise, and I can lean on that knowl­edge to fast-track my under­stand­ing. So, of course, there is cer­tain­ly a time and place for aca­d­e­m­ic knowl­edge, but there is also a place for a rela­tion­al one. I often find that look­ing at a book and know­ing a “name” decon­tex­tu­al­izes the moment and there­fore the con­nec­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty before me. I see a bird, take a pho­to, and upload the pic­ture to MerlinID and I instant­ly know the name of the species (briefly if we’re being hon­est). But the price I have paid for that instant is being tak­en com­plete­ly out of the moment. Did I have a chance to admire how the bird flew? Was it exu­ber­ant or grace­ful? Was there joy? Purpose? Play?

Naming is a very spe­cif­ic way humans in Western cul­ture relate with the world around them. In my career as a nature and sci­ence edu­ca­tor, I’ve found again and again peo­ple will auto­mat­i­cal­ly deny them­selves a rela­tion­ship with a bird, plant, etc. even before they give them­selves a chance, just because they don’t know their name. There is a stig­ma around nescience, or a lack of knowl­edge, which pro­duces a lot of feel­ings of shame in gen­er­al­ized American cul­ture, to the point they will deny them­selves curios­i­ty and learning.

But I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to know the name of an ani­mal in order to con­nect with them. The nam­ing of an ani­mal is specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to one human way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and speaks noth­ing about the rela­tion­al dynam­ic of between the human and the non-human world.

I’ve spent a long time get­ting to know plants and have even adopt­ed the title “Plant Person.” Needless to say, I know a lot of dif­fer­ent plants. So when I want­ed to know birds, I approached the task the same way I learned about plants: just a rep­e­ti­tion of notic­ing and devel­op­ing rela­tion­ship with the plants that I see over the pas­sage of time.

She is the tallest tree in the yard, I see her every day when I go to work. She has sil­very paper bark that peels away. Her leaves are large and point­ed. Oh, some leaves have three points and some have five. I walk with a friend under­neath this tree and she shares with me, “Sycamore.” And the more often I see Sycamore, I notice oth­er things, like the fluffy seed pods that burst when I step on them, and in the win­ter the tops of the branch­es still have hard­ened cling­ing seed pods dan­gling from the bare branches. 

When I’m at a dis­tance in win­ter I can rec­og­nize some of the seed pods she has­n’t released yet and from there I notice Sycamore’s branch­es twist and arc in a cer­tain way. I know I have the right tree, because she is the tallest tree in the yard. I meet her else­where. I see she loves the waters edge when I float down the Elkhorn River. When I notice the scat­ter­ing of tawny fluff on a lawn I know when I look up, there she will be. I can now even dis­cern the yel­low-green of her leaves from all the oth­er plants when zoom­ing down the interstate.

This was my approach to learn­ing to iden­ti­fy birds. But the fun­ny thing is that unlike plants, birds aren’t sta­tion­ary so it’s not about watch­ing a plant through years of sea­sons. With birds, there is a fleet­ing instant, a snatch of a song, a brief sil­hou­ette in the sky. So for now, I’ve been watch­ing birds. They’ve been inter­est­ing this year in par­tic­u­lar because of the Brood XIV cica­da emer­gence. I’ve wit­nessed very impres­sive, sin­gle-mind­ed bird acro­bat­ics chas­ing the admit­ted­ly dopey, guile­less cicadas.

(As an aside, it is very clear the Brood XIV sur­vival strat­e­gy is a com­mu­nal, en masse phi­los­o­phy: the safe­ty of the species is in num­bers. No self preser­va­tion what­so­ev­er because they’re just the friend­liest lit­tle guys I’ve ever met.) 

I say the birds were very sin­gle-mind­ed because I noticed a lot more dead birds on the road. My hypoth­e­sis is they were hit by cars in their focused hunt­ing flight.

I’ve also watched birds with oth­ers and had a bird date with one of my dear­est friends (the same who named Sycamore for me). We joined the Lexington Bird Cult on a walk at the University of Kentucky Arboretum and then vis­it­ed the “Charlie Harper: Birds and Beasts” exhib­it at the Headley-Whitney Museum of Art. That was the day I learned that Indigo Bunting sings at the tops of trees and that car­di­nal part­ners will pass gifts of food between them as a court­ing ritual.

Honestly, I don’t remem­ber any oth­er facts from that day, but I remem­ber the way the Bird Cult mur­mu­rat­ed around the arbore­tum and that makes me laugh. After gath­er­ing at the appoint­ed spot and brief intro­duc­tions we took off togeth­er on the path, stick­ing togeth­er and point­ing out any birds we saw. But as we walked for longer, our group stretched and broke off, lin­ger­ing to look at the tops of trees or forg­ing ahead to find what await­ed around the cor­ner. But, we always man­aged to group togeth­er again to share what we saw and to point out par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing or rare sight­ings. That hap­pened many times dur­ing the walk, just a bunch of bird­ers and bird watch­ers, behav­ing like a flock.

I don’t know what that means yet, or even if it needs to have a deep­er mean­ing. I’m con­tent with priv­i­lege of see­ing and not know­ing, just watching.