Listening for the Birds

By: | May 31, 2023

Helen, currently hors de combat but returning soon to battle, has been listening for birds forever and ever since she wrote this, October 2, 2019. For all I know, she can now tell sparrows apart, a magisterial accomplishment. -Ed.

I’ve always been bad at bird songs.

My neighbor corrected me on this on Sunday, as we were walking down the alley behind my building, so here’s a more accurate statement: I’ve never put in the work that is required to be really good at bird songs. To really learn bird songs, I think you have to study, or at least do more than asking someone else what that sound is.

Still, over the last several decades, most of them spent within 10 miles of my desk here in Washington, D.C., I have learned to recognize some of the more distinctive-sounding common birds. The mourning dove with its moans, the mockingbird cycling through its repertoire of snippets, the starling with its whistles and skree-onks.

The ones with good mnemonics stuck in my head, too. The ovenbird, calling “Teacher, Teacher, Teacher!” from deep in the woods. That one bird that sings “drink your teeeea” – I can never remember what it is, but I know enough to Google its command.

On days when I take time to do it, I have a lovely walk to work, and I’ve caught onto some of the common, but less spectacular, calls, too—the cardinal, the house sparrows. One of my most exciting morning commute moments was when I was listening to a mockingbird go through its list—and it switched to its version of the blue jay’s harsh call, and I realized I was identifying two birds at once. (You may not think this is exciting. A supervisor once told me, accurately, that I have a low threshold for fun.)

And there’s the crows. American crows and fish crows both theoretically live around here. They look the same—like crows—but the American crow says “caw!” and the fish crow says “ca-caw!” Based on all the “caw!” sounds, and the fact that I don’t live near any fish, I decided all big black birds were American crows, but I was never really sure if I knew the difference.

This life of paying vague attention to bird sounds has happened alongside a dramatic decline in the number of birds making sounds around me. Last month a paper in the journal Science looked at a bunch of different datasets on bird surveys, did a bunch of modeling, and figured that birds had declined in the U.S. and Canada by 29% since 1970.

A decline this big is hard to get my head around—and depressing, and scary. A decline of almost a third is a massive decline. And it makes me think of another part of the history of North American birds: Once upon a time, there were unfathomable multitudes of passenger pigeons, and then there were fewer, and then there were none.

My neighbor and I were talking about bird sounds on Sunday because we were listening to one. It was loud and squawky. It sounded like a crow, but wrong. I walked down the alley, looking up at the trees, trying to see what was making the sound.

Finally, through a gap in the branches: Big, black. Solidly a crow. But its song was clearly not a “caw.” It was, according to the Cornell bird lab, “short, nasal and quite different-sounding from an American Crow. This call is sometimes doubled-up with an inflection similar to someone saying uh-uh.” That’s exactly what it sounded like – a nasal “uh-uh!” from above.

Yes, it was the fish crow. Which, conservation-wise, is probably doing fine. But a lot of other birds aren’t.

Birds are so ubiquitous. For most Americans, I’m betting the decline has gone unnoticed. I guess this is an example of “shifting baseline syndrome”–a phenomenon conservationists talk about, in which, as ecosystems decline, people forget what things used to be like, or new generations are born thinking that having this many birds is normal.

I have mixed feelings about the talk of shifting baselines. It seems like it has a touch of nostalgia for a past that is never coming back. But here’s the math: There used to be a lot of birds and, while there are still a lot of birds, there are way, way fewer than there used to be. It’s not the kind of trajectory I want to be on, wildlife-wise. So what are we going to do?

Art: A crow from the Met. It’s from 17th century Italy, so I assume it was another species of crow entirely, and who knows what it sounded like.

Caterpillars Go Marching

By: | May 29, 2023

I can’t remember who noticed them first. From far away they looked like a crack in the pavement, or maybe a stick. But then someone crouched down, and then the rest of us did, and the crack or stick or trick of the light turned into a line of caterpillars.

They came one after the other like a rolling train of boxcars. We imagined them talking to each other: “Where are we going?” “Hey, dude, your butt is in my face!” “Your face is in my butt!” We put small leaves in their path and they went around them, one after the other, six legs at a time.

These pine processionary caterpillars were making their way from the trees where they were born to a place with soil soft enough that they can dig themselves in. They would make their cocoon underground, and stay there at least until the end of summer, where they would emerge as greyish moths.

We processed on, too, stepping carefully over the caterpillars, walking up through the stone walls of the town of Gubbio. We were not going to cocoon—this first trip out of the country seemed like the opposite. First we tried to peel off our anxieties, then our itineraries, then our face masks. We tried to remember what it was like to not be home.

The processionary caterpillar finds its trail with pheromones it secretes from its abdomen. They are constant, forward-moving. In a lab, caterpillars processed around a circular trail of pheromones for 12 hours.

In the Colosseum, a few days earlier, we were processionary. We followed people who were following other people, who were following a guidebook, who were listening to an audio tour from Rick Steves, who were following a woman with a pink umbrella. We had followed people elsewhere, too. We followed a woman who carried a piece of whole wheat bread in her purse through the gardens at Tivoli. We followed a couple who looked like they knew where they were going into a restaurant. We followed a 14-year-old who thought he knew where he was going. We followed Google maps and paper maps and bus lines. We followed signs to the Temple of Tiramisu.

I have always felt a little itchy—and sometimes a lot itchy—in crowds. I like to know where I’m going, and go there, and feel like I’m doing it on my own. But this time, it felt different. Maybe because it was good to finally be among people. Maybe I also saw the 14-year-old doing the exact same things I once did, when I was somewhere unfamiliar—striding ahead, not stopping to look around, certain they knew where they were going, certain that they did not need help, or a map.

That way has started to feel exhausting to me, even though it once felt necessary. Maybe I realized it was okay to not know where you were going. Maybe I realized that I really hadn’t ever known where I was going, and had never gotten there on my own.

*

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Screaming Parties

By: | May 26, 2023

Earlier this month I visited Portugal for the first time, where I found much to love: the vertiginous cliffs overlooking the Nazaré beach, the ubiquitous custard tarts and dessert wines, the labyrinth of secret passages that veins Lisbon’s Alfama neighborhood. Uncultured nature-loving heathen that I am, however, I found myself most drawn to the country’s wildlife — namely, to its swifts.

The common swifts, Apus apus, gathered each evening above Lisbon’s streets and squares, sharp black chevrons silhouetted against purpling sky, the very picture of grace and velocity. They rocketed down alleys and wheeled past balconies, accelerating into turns so steep and sudden they would have made Maverick pass out. All the while they shrieked at each other, shrill and raucous — a nightly production of avian cacophony called, perfectly, a “screaming party.” And then, though I never quite saw them do it, they disappeared into the heavens, an ascension known, for its synchronicity with evening prayers, as a “vesper flight.” (The first rule of swifts is that their every behavior must have an odd and charming name.)

“Vesper Flights” is, not coincidentally, the title of an essay collection by the estimable British nature writer Helen Macdonald; the book bears a swift, outstretched and eye glittering, on its cover. In the titular piece, Macdonald explicates the mind-blowing biology of swifts, virtuosic flyers who, after fledging, can go two years without touching earth. Each night, swifts fly as high as six thousand feet to sleep on the wing — a fact discovered by a World War I-era French aviator who blundered into a flock deep in slumber, “miniature black stars illuminated by the reflected light of the moon.” But they don’t just climb to such great heights to snooze: They also feel the rush of high-altitude air flows and so forecast incoming weather systems, and calibrate their internal magnetic compasses against stars and polarized light. “They’re quietly, perfectly, orienting themselves,” Macdonald writes.

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What We’ve Completely 100% Changed Our Minds About

By: | May 24, 2023

I’m not sure why I’m interested in what people change their minds about – maybe because I’m at the age where a person looks back and wonders what the hell that was all about. Like, a person of a certain age tries to find the through-lines of life and sees how many of them just turn around and head off in the opposite direction. Is this the process of maturation? is it just response to new information? I’m not sure about people who don’t sometimes completely 100% change their minds. Do such people even exist? Anyway, I asked my colleagues on LWON for examples of U-turns.

KATE: I used to feel embarrassed about being from New Jersey. Whenever a new person asked me where I grew up, I said, Oh, you know. Around. Sometimes I said Ocean. This was true in both the broadest sense–we never lived too far from the Atlantic—and literally, as I went to high school in Ocean Township. It also served to obscure what I considered the mortifying truth.

Those who have never been to New Jersey may believe the state is crowded, greasy, belligerent, the scowling little brother of New York. They might expect the people there to be loud, tacky, caught up in organized crime, gym-tan-laundry, acrylic nails, hoop earrings, cannoli, bagels, hair spray. And they’d be right. My classmates could easily have joined the cast of Jersey Shore. Our region didn’t have a county fair; it had an Italian-American festival. Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi were local gods. So yes, this is New Jersey. But it isn’t all of it.

It took moving far away for me to realize that New Jersey is weird. Our state monster has cloven hooves and bat wings and flapped straight up and out the chimney the moment he was born. New Jersey is the only U.S. state with no official song, because a composer named Red Mascara (yes, really) was so annoying in his quest to get his piece selected that the state government banned the entire concept of a state song altogether. The state canine is the seeing eye dog. New Jersey is diverse and full of culture. You can get a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes or a cup of matzoh-ball soup or both at 2 a.m. if you want to. My people are not restrained, complex, or elegant. We are blunt and earthy and dazzlingly accessorized. We are wave-pounded, salt-crusted, and heavy on the bass. We fight for what we care about. We bring the best desserts.

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Free

By: | May 22, 2023
Cartoon drawing of a beaming wedge of yellow cheese and a happy baguette riding a purple bald eagle through a blue sky

Twenty-one years ago, Domino’s Pizza ran a fairly mundane promotion: customers who purchased a large one-topping pizza would also receive an order of cheesy bread, on the house. This event would not have even registered for me, or anyone I knew, had Domino’s not advertised it like this: 

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The Molt

By: | May 19, 2023

Brown

Penguins are black and white—everyone knows this—except when they aren’t, like in April, at a place called Punta Tombo. Punta Tombo is a gnarled peninsula in southern Argentina that hosts a large colony of Magellanic penguins. Every September, more than two hundred thousand of them come here to breed. They pair up, lay a clutch of two eggs, incubate those eggs, have a brood of two chicks, feed those chicks, and, finally, watch those chicks strike off on their own. The luckiest penguins go through all those steps over the course of several months. The vast majority of penguins are not that lucky, however. Some never find a mate, or a kelp gull eats their eggs, or their chicks starve, and so on. Sometimes I am astonished at all the ways they can be unlucky. Even so, no matter the outcome of the breeding season, once March and April arrive, every single penguin molts.

The molt seems to me a harsh way to close the year. Some birds only molt a few feathers at a time so they can keep living their lives more or less unaffected by the need for new plumage. Not so Magellanic penguins. Magellanic penguins undergo what is called a catastrophic molt, which means they replace all their feathers at the same time. To prepare for this involved procedure, they first leave the colony for two or three weeks to stuff themselves with food. When they return, they settle in a nest, or sometimes just a patch of open ground, and stop preening and oiling their feathers. Deprived of care and oil, the feathers soon lose their lustrous blackness, fading to brown. The colony fills with brown penguins.

This is the first stage of the molt. Because we are creative, we call it Brown. Think of it as the beginning of the end.


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The Death of the Moth Would Be Just Fine By Me, Thanks

By: | May 17, 2023
A small brown miller moth crossed out behind the no symbol

The invasion is now in full swing. I am not sure if I’ll make it beyond tonight. You have no idea what I’ve seen out there.

It began a few nights ago, though it was chilly then. The earth gleamed with moisture. There were fewer of them; the cold and the rain held them off, I think.

We knew they were coming, because it’s that time of year, but we did not know, yet, that there would be so many. How could we know?

That first night, I saw one or two. Oh. Oh no. They’re back, I thought. A couple days later came the first sign that this invasion would be epic. We could not know, for real, because the state entomologist whose forecasts I read with alacrity has apparently retired. So I have no idea what the miller moth season will be like this year; I can only pray that it will not be as bad as the summer of 2020, or heavens forbid, the summer of 1989.

But then one morning last week, I opened the door for the dog. Several of them had glommed onto my storm door, seeking warmth, and I’d just dislodged them. Some half-dozen moths fell stupidly onto my head, while many (so many) others fluttered directly into my face and hair. My screams traveled the neighborhood and brought my children to tears. My screams heralded the miller moths’ annual arrival. My screams trumpeted the beginning of the end.

The end is nigh. The end of my love of the summer night is upon us. I cannot be out there when they are there. I cannot go to the door in peace, or anything resembling normalcy, when they are out there. I cringe. I shiver. I falter. I flail, Elaine-like, entranced by fear. I dance and I zigzag, not unlike—well, one might say, not unlike one of them. I shriek into the ear of my literary agent while on a phone call, I hurt my arm in the door in my attempt to slam it on them. Unfortunately, I have never been conscious of a strange sort of pity for them.

I went outside tonight to hear the great horned owls, which are in the early stages of their mating season. The hoo-hu-hooo, hoo-hu-hooo, hoo-hu-hooo flying from treetops is one of my favorite experiences in the woods I now inhabit. Dusk is such a wonderful time in the early-summer mountains. The hummingbirds were buzzing to my feeder, the turkeys were gobbling about something, the magpies were screeching, what I think was a pine siskin was screech-squealing in the woods, and the owls were getting an early start. I went out just to stand there, to hear the birdsong and to watch the night come by. I thought I saw a few small blurs flit across my vision, so I blinked a few times. I need a new eyeglass prescription. Wait—no. My eyes were not adjusting. I was seeing real movement in front of the trees, above the trees, all around and within and through the trees. I was seeing them.

I saw dozens of them, at least. Hundreds of thousands of them were flying past my porch, probably at least 1.5 million of them per square foot. It was horrible to think that one billion miller moths were out there with me, flying above my 3/4 of an acre. A trillion moths is too many moths for anyone, but especially for me.

Thump. Thump. Thump. I went inside and could no longer hear the great horned owls, but instead the stupid muffled sound of Colorado’s most obnoxious creatures fluttering haplessly against the windows. They were trying to reach the light. I hate them so much. I do not see the pure bead of life in them; I am so sorry. They are my greatest phobia. They are dusty, hence their “miller” nickname, and their poop is maroon and weirdly large and it stains the walls, and why? They are oddly proportioned, with huge fat bodies and long legs and stubby little delta wings. I cannot describe them further, I am sorry. The end is nigh. I hope my neighbor bears eat them all.

If you’re reading this, I have survived to write another day. Working in the dark, after my children were safely sleeping, I survived logging into WordPress amid the sound of them beating their wings against my windows. Thump. Thump. Thump. My friend down the street texted me a photo: What the hell? They are in my fireplace!

If you’re reading this, I actually may or may not still be alive. We will see what tonight brings.

May the ghost of Virginia Woolf forgive me.

Image: Adapted from Flickr user Louis – CC BY-SA 2.0

Island Mom

By: | May 15, 2023

There are things I have not revisited since spring 2020 because they remind me too much of the darkest days of the pandemic. Puzzles, for instance. I have not done a puzzle in three years, nor have I eaten frozen Costco salmon (my parents panic-bought us roughly a million fillets in mid-March, and it took us months to get through them). There are pairs of pants I refuse to wear because they remind me of being extremely depressed. My one solace, in those days, was playing Animal Crossing on my Nintendo Switch. There, I “saw” friends by visiting their islands while chatting with them on Zoom, and I built a virtual house and a virtual garden and nobody there had COVID. I even wrote about its questionable ethics here in July 2020.

Recently, I logged back on after months away from my island. Weeds surrounded my virtual orchard; my villager friends said passive aggressive things like, “We were worried about you!” I had a few dozen messages in the mailbox outside my house: the local airlines sending me a note of thanks (spam); Fuscia, the pink deer who is my best friend in the game, inexplicably sent me a refrigerator (?); and there were multiple gifts and notes from “Mom.”

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