Listening to the Birds

One day, while coteaching a wilderness program for local youth with my dear friend and fellow nature awareness practitioner Lily, we found ourselves sitting with a dozen children in a mostly dry stream bed. A small amount of water still trickled through this shallow gully that cut across the wooded landscape and offered us a cool reprieve from the intense summer sun, as the kids focused on shaping river clay into sculptures, cups, and bowls. It was wonderfully serene for summer camp. Dappled sun came through the branches and the green-yellow leaves overhead, with songbirds singing all around.

A moment later, however, the tranquility vanished … at least for the birds. There was a peppering of alarm calls from multiple species of songbirds in the distance that caused me to stop and look up.¹ Shooting a look over to Lily I saw that she had the same knowing in her eyes. We heard the silence begin somewhere upstream and felt it in our bodies. We watched and listened as the voices of the birds went quiet, and the silence moved toward us at a great speed. We knew what was coming and were both suddenly on high alert as we waited frozen in time. In a flash, just under the canopy of the trees, the hawk came into sight. Following the stream corridor, it was over us and gone in a flash, the hawk and the silence whooshing past like a jet plane.

Slowly, upstream where it had come from, faint calls of the bravest songbirds could be heard. They grew in volume over time, and the silence filled back in just as it had been created. Eventually, both the silence and the alarmed calls of the songbirds were replaced, as the birds sang once more, and the sense of peace returned.

Lily and I looked at each other and the kids with huge smiles on our faces, feeling the electricity of what we had just experienced. The children, for the most part, had simply continued working on their clay sculptures, unaware that anything had happened. For us, though, we had for a time been the songbirds ourselves—small sentinels of the forest noticing the coming and going of dangerous predators who would end our lives in a single moment if we were caught unaware.

The Cooper’s hawk that had flown over us was, of course, not a threat to humans, but it survives and feeds its family by eating small unsuspecting birds who forget to notice what is happening in the forest around them. If a songbird loses sight of the big picture, lost in the business of building nests, claiming territory, or chasing after a mate, then it soon finds that it has become food for the Cooper’s hawk and its brood of chicks. It is only through a great practice of awareness and communication with one another that songbirds survive. They have become masterful at knowing when to sound the alarm and when to simply stay very quiet. They rely on one another to know what they could not know alone, what is happening upstream and out of sight. Like our ancestors before us, Lily and I were practicing tuning into this language of the birds. The first alarm calls drew our attention, as they were out of sync with the flow of the songs all around us. The silence showed us where to look.

In today’s world, we modern humans mostly do not hear the alarms or the silence around us. We don’t listen to the birds to know the movement of hawks or feel the wind to know the changing of the weather. We often miss out on the direct experience of life that is the rich and raw stream of creation flowing around and through us.

The good news is that at any time we can remember what our ancestors knew, what is possible, and then begin again. We can turn off our screens and tune into our surroundings. We can feel our place in the natural world through direct sensory observation and let curiosity and intention guide our movements. We can take our seat at the center of this vast universe and notice the miracle of life’s movement around and in us.

As we reattune to our senses, our connection with the natural world grows, of course, but so does our connection with ourselves and our community. We learn to read the stories behind the stories and to have compassion for the unfolding of the moments that build our days. We see more clearly the cause and effect of our actions and begin naturally to shift our responses to life, bringing more joy and ease into the world. The interconnectedness of the web of life becomes quite visible to us. We discover, as naturalist and pioneer John Muir says, “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”²

Try: Find a time and place where you can be for a while and tune into the voices of the birds. This could be a backyard, a local park, or beneath some street trees in the city. Early morning or early evening can be rich times for birdsongs, but almost any time will do. Begin by simply becoming still. Let yourself be at ease and rest. Take a few minutes to scan through your body, noticing sensations like temperature, moisture, contact with clothing and the ground beneath you, and the pull of gravity. Find your breath in your body, and see if you might stay with the sensations of breathing in and out for a time.

Now, from this place of presence in the body, let your awareness move to an understanding of all that is required for you to be safe in your life. Shelter in the form of a warm bed or a roof over your head. Food in the fridge or the money to meet your basic needs. Friendship and companionship with others. Consider how you move through life and how you communicate when your needs are met. How about when they are not? When you are afraid or concerned? When you are happy and well? Spending time with a partner or raising children?

Consider now that all the living creatures of this Earth including the birds around you also have experiences like these. Listen carefully to the sounds of the birds and watch as they move about the landscape. Are they at ease or tense? Are they in the process of raising young or courting a mate? If they are building nests or feeding young and a threat comes into their lives, can you hear the change in their vocalizations and see it in their behavior? Just like us the birds have families. Just like us they have work to do each day. Just like us they must pay attention to the changing times.