Prompt: Birding with New Eyes by Jack Phillips* (to accompany interview with Jeff Koterba, KVNO, February 18th at 0900: https://kvno.org/jeff-around-town/).
.
*Creighton University School of Medicine, University of Nebraska Omaha MFA, and The Naturalist School
When it comes to birding, what could be more important than becoming kin? Entering an intimate relationship means more than learning their English and scientific names. Of course that is important too — but that can come later. What matters most today is the quality of our attention.
Prompt: Please put your binoculars and notebook away and your phone on nature mode. That means OFF. There are no experts here, no apps or field guides will help you with this. See the birds with native eyes, with fresh brains. Birding in the raw. As small children we saw birds and other creatures with pure fascination. Let us see nature with our young and curious eyes!
Find a bird and learn their ways. Walk softly and silently and slowly or just be still. You can walk in the woods or stay close to camp or close to home — anywhere with wild birds and not too much human-generated sound. You might see lots of birds or very few.
Take time for a bird-while. Wait for a special bird to appear. You might get just a moment with your new friend or a few minutes. Or your bird might briefly leave and then come back to see what you are up to or follow in your bird-wake. The duration of time that a bird will allow you to observe is a “bird-while” — a unit of time relative to distance introduced by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Focus your eyes then relax them; let this bird emerge from the surrounding habitat then melt back in. Let their rhythms and colors, mannerisms and personality and sounds soak your big wet animal brain. Ponder how your hopes for this bird reflect your own, how the care of this wondrous creature is the care we need as well, how the fate of wild nature is a future we share.
Create and hold the space for wonder and reciprocity. In the communal space between members of the Earth community, we can experience each other as kin. In that shared gaze your image is taken into the eye and brain and body of your bird as you invite their image into yours. The space between you becomes a new reality of giving and receiving, a mutual and unique expression of primal energy. In this way your bodies and being are co-mingled, in that moment a new creation.
Your bird will reveal their name. Listen to bird-language silent and spoken. Do not write it down, just take it into your heart. Let your bird write the first line of your poem. After you get to know each other, gently reveal your name with the soft animal muscles of speech. Later as you sit at a table or on a stump, record your encounter in poetic words or colors or shapes or some of each. This could be the beginning of the most important field guide your will ever own!
When you are back home you can use a field guide to learn the colonial English and scientific names for your bird. You might even look into the Ioway, Otoe, Pawnee, Omaha, Potawatomi or other local indigenous name. To demonstrate, here are a couple of my entries from this winter’s poetic field guide:
Kawakaw
Kawakawa kaw/ raucous onyx cousin/preening purple into sunlight
Notes: Kawa-Kaws swarmed an owl this morning along the frozen creek that feeds the pond. One of them seemed a little more interested in me than the others, but then decided to sit alone in the bright sun preening with a curious eye on me. So beautiful! So iridescent! Research: Pawnee: KaKa, Otoe: Káxe. Colonial name: American crow, scientific name: Corvus brachyrhyncos
Churra-churble
Churra-churra/ blue the north, rufus to the sun/ — paints the day in churbles.
Notes: I saw a bright little friend perched high in the bare canopy. At my approach they flew but quickly returned to resume a sun-facing bask. So I likewise turned my face to the sun and closed my eyes. My inside-eyelids took the color of that rufus breast. That must be how they got their colors — straight from the morning sun and winter sky. Research: Scientific name, Sialia sialis, in taxonomic Greek meaning “a kind of bird.” What a dull name for a striking little eastern bluebird! I much prefer the name revealed to me. A Pawnee man told me that blue and red birds are messengers. What message was intended for me?
Photos: Blue Jay and northern cardinal; black-capped chickadee (Washington County, Nebraska) by Finn Soderberg. Wild poets in Fremont County, Iowa by Jack Phillips. Eastern bluebird in Saunders County, Nebraska by Neal Ratzlaff.