The first bird was a parakeet, and it was her tameness that did it. I would often watch her resting on my cousin’s shoulder where she would gently allow herself to be kissed on the beak. She was a wild thing with unclipped wings and a desire to fly, but her insistence on being handled, picked up, played with, also seemed to suggest there was a willingness to connect with her humans in a way I had only ever truly witnessed in dogs. She was small but curious like a precious green gemstone and I, barely five years old, longed to experience that bond of a girl and her bird that my cousin had. It would be a few more years before I had a bird of my own, and several more years before I bonded with one so strongly – a quaker parrot – that to this day, seven years since her death, I still resist talking about her in too much detail. But it will always be that first bird, that beautiful green parakeet who wasn’t even mine, that did it, drawing me into its avian world and setting in motion a love affair that would go on to color my life.
My earliest memories of observing birds are of pet stores where I would often stand and watch the dozens of parakeets for sale as they nervously flitted from branch to branch. Then, there was Project Feederwatch, a winter program designed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that focuses on counting and identifying the birds frequenting feeders throughout the winter. My father and I signed up for the program when I was in elementary school, spending our winter mornings at the kitchen sink, peering out the window towards our single, modest feeder that he had hung for me from the crab apple tree in our backyard. This is how I learned to identify purple finches and juncos, always loving how the juncos’ soft bellies constantly looked like they had been stained with freshly fallen snow. Still, despite my early love of birds, I have never really pushed myself to bird frequently until recently, with this year marking the first year where I have truly made an effort to tune myself into the spring migration.
Oriole migration, illustration by L. Hisako Nakashima
I started with the orioles. Never having seen one in person, this spring I became determined to coax them to my yard. I purchased several nectar feeders designed specifically for their large bodies and un-hummingbird beaks, and I spent mornings tenderly slicing oranges to skewer onto posts. I waited for them for weeks, always glancing out the windows throughout the day hoping to catch sight of that vibrant orange, but the fresh fruit and feeders seemed largely untouched.
Then, on a morning walk with two other birders generous enough to share both their time and invaluable birding knowledge with me, I saw one. Identified first by its song, we located it at the top of a small gathering of trees. I trained my binoculars onto its body and felt overwhelmed by all of that orange. It was at once both psychedelic and luminescent, so much so that I felt almost as if staring at it for too long might damage my eyes. It was singularly solar and insulated by the black shadow of its dark feathers. I watched until he seemed to decide I’d seen enough, suddenly taking off to continue on his way.
But the orioles weren’t the only wonder of the day. We identified nearly 40 birds on our walk, more than any other time I have ever attempted to identify birds on my own, and I went home feeling like I had been let into a secret club – not a club of birders per se, but rather just birds. It was as if the aperture of the earth had opened up allowing me an opportunity to glimpse the vastness of the avian world and its unbelievable nearness to me. That morning, I felt myself fervently trying to retain as much knowledge as I could, viewing each identified bird song as one key in a set of keys capable of unlocking a part of the world that has largely remained untranslatable to me.
Recently, while sitting in my backyard enjoying the dusk, I heard a strangely familiar, buzzy chirrup coming from the trees. I had the odd feeling that I had heard it before, but the identity of the bird escaped me. I scanned the trees, and when I found it perched high in the branches, its subtle crest slightly raised, I smiled. Because of course. The great crested flycatcher. It sat on the edges of the branches calling as the sun set.
The great crested flycatcher was one of the first birds we identified on our walk a month ago. I remember peering at it in the dense forest, listening to her song, trying to commit it to memory. At the time, I was uncertain if its language would stick with me, but here in my backyard, after some time had passed, it was evident that it had. In my attempts to identify birds by sight and sound, I am still new. But my experience with the spring migration this year has taught me that the language and knowledge will come over time, if I let it. If I am patient enough and diligent enough, the natural world and its many languages can open up to me, welcoming me to pick out a sound, home in on it, and call its maker by its rightful name.
