In the Forward of The Great House of Birds, Classic Writings about Birds (1996; Sierra Club Books; 306 pp.; $24.00 hardback), editor John Hay wonders why birds get so much attention from humans. It was a line of inquiry that I kept coming back to as I read the book. And I read the book more slowly than most other books. This survey of writings about birds together with Hay’s inquiry had the effect of making me want to see birds in the wild. So this was not a book that I could stay with indoors for hours on end; rather, it was one that I found more appropriate to read in short bursts just before going into the field—or even to read in the field.
The short selections in The Great House of Birds were drawn from a wide variety of writers that exhibit an equally wide variety of styles. Writers range from such well-known personalities as John James Audubon and Rachel Carson to an anonymous seafarer whose selection was written about 1,000 year ago. Eleven of the 61 selections in the book are poems; in fact, the book begins and ends with a poem. Because I do not usually read poetry, I found these selections required me to open my philistine mind a bit and lower some barriers. Yet I still found Pattiann Rogers’ reference to the “needs of infinity” in her poem “The Objects of Immortality” to be a bit perplexing. As a contrast, “How Birds Migrate,” by Roger J. Pasquier almost borders on the prosaically scientific. However, it is the diversity of styles represented in this book that is responsible for its particular attractiveness.
The selections that I enjoyed reading the most were descriptions of observations made of wild birds in the field. Perhaps my favorite selection in the book is “The Rainbow Birds of Spring” by Edwin Way Teale, where he states that “Nothing is more alive in the world than a warbler in spring.” Anyone who has ever tried to follow a yellow-rumped warbler with binoculars can attest to Teale’s statement. I found the scant nine pages of “From Another World” by Louis J. Halle to be so good that I was sorry it ended, and I felt like reading it again. Some of the selections I had already read years before in their original publications. But I can never seem to get enough of John Muir’s “The Water Ouzel,” a truly classic description of nature. Muir writes: “Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. When I was exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stickeen River, one cold day in November, after trying in vain to force my way through the innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers at the head of it…I suddenly heard the well-known whir of the ouzel’s wings, and, looking up saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from shore.” While reading Muir, I could not help but think that today’s armchair computer ecologists would benefit greatly from experiences with nature such as Muir describes in this selection.
The writings in The Great House of Birds are not just randomly arranged, but are grouped into six major sections. John Hay also provides a short introduction to each section and to each selection, which tends to give the book a sense of continuity and direction. The first section is entitled “Flight.” This topic is an appropriate way to start the book, as flight may arguably be the most important characteristic that comes to mind when one thinks of birds (other than, possibly, feathers). To be sure, some bird species are flightless, but the majority of species can fly; flight is their most enviable trait.
If the first selections set birds apart from humans, the next two major sections (“The Language of Birds” and “Art and Ritual”) bring us back together. Birds obviously communicate with each other, and Hay ponders the meanings of their communications: “But what are they communicating? Messages, for one thing, expressing basic needs and intentions.” I like the idea of birds communicating meaningful messages.
In a broad sense, birds and humans compete for the same habitat space; if this were not so, then habitat destruction by humans would not be the major cause of bird population declines today. Hay suggests that “we really [cannot]understand so varied a race as the birds, with all their attributes, outside the context of the land, the sea, the air above us.” In short, the habitats of birds. The last three sections of the book loosely focus on birds in certain geographic areas, habitats, and migration. In the section entitled “The Migrants” the book comes full circle, and again we are thinking of birds in the air, but purposely flying from one location to another on well-traveled routes. The fact that some birds travel long distances invites awe as Peter Matthiessen tells of the white-rumped sandpiper that flies “nine thousand miles twice every year in pursuit of summer….” Thinking about this makes me feel extremely provincial. The white-rumped sandpiper and all other long-distance migrants deserve our utmost respect for such extraordinary accomplishments.
It was after reading Mattheissen’s selection that I realized John Hay could have asked an additional question at the beginning of the book; that is, not so much a question of why birds get as much attention as they do, but why they do not get more attention. Hay suggests that it is the elusiveness of birds that intrigues us. I would add that human fascination with birds probably results in part from simple curiosity about a group of obviously very different creatures that upon closer inspection exhibit many similarities with ourselves.
Birders will enjoy this book, but it also deserves a wider audience outside of the already converted birding community.
Review by Thomas V. Lerczak
[This review was originally published in Illinois Audubon magazine, Fall 1997 Number262, pages 25]