The Backyard Bird Chronicles

“What remains of those three years are not just recollections of creatures I touched but the way I discovered strange wonders by crawling over shrubs, pushing aside brambles, crouching or lying on my stomach, slipping down creek banks, wading in water, and getting scratched up, banged up, or torn up.”

Tan describes curiosity as a type of refuge. She recalls running to the creek near her home as a child whenever she had trouble at home, seeking solace in the quiet observation of the polliwogs. The same is true as she navigates a pandemic through birding, finding strength in the quiet moments watching birds as life spins chaotically around her.

“The classes were not strictly about drawing. If anything, they had just as much to do with being curious, allowing us to return to childhood wonderment, when everything was seen as new. That was the focus for beginning our drawings. To wonder in depth, to notice, to question.”

In his classes, John Muir Laws begins with wonder and intentional curiosity. He believes these are essential to developing as a learner and naturalist. When taking his class, Tan feels connected to the wonder and curiosity she felt as a child, seeing that these are essential qualities in The Art of Paying Attention. As she works on her skills as an observer, she finds that wonder and curiosity do not wane. Instead, they increase.

“Questions that beget more questions are the fertile spores that can lead you deeper into the forest.”

This idea is essential to the idea of Inquiry as a Path to Understanding. In the Preface, Tan describes meeting a young naturalist named Fiona who teaches her how to engage with intentional curiosity. An essential element of this concept developed by Laws is questioning. Fiona and Laws encourage Tan to allow questions to lead her down new paths and to find new patterns.

“I became that bird looking at me. If I could maintain the belief that I was the bird, I had a better chance of making the bird look alive, feel alive, present in the moment before I, the human, stepped outside to teach it how to stay alive.”

Here, Tan describes her first experience with Embodiment as Creative Practice. She was familiar with embodiment as a fiction writer, but applying the skill to birds is something new for her. Throughout the book, Tan practices embodiment, often beginning with inquiry, to gain a sense of what it might be like to live as the bird. In these moments, she also considers herself and how her context contributes to the experiences of her avian friends.

“To draw the Pine Siskin, I must work my way back to seeing it without heartache. I have to feel the bird is alive again.”

The death of a pine siskin is significant to Tan, symbolizing the dual forces of light and dark in the natural world. When she attempts to draw the bird later, she discovers that her illustration is also impacted by her emotional response. The bird is lifeless on the page, even though it was alive when she saw it.

“The more I observe, the more I realize that every part of a bird and every behavior has a specific purpose, a reason, and individual meaning. Instinct does not account for everything that is fascinating.”

This is a significant discovery for Tan in The Art of Paying Attention. Many behaviors she previously dismissed or categorized as instinctual rearrange themselves upon closer observation. Tan realizes that the birds are exhibiting complex and individualized behaviors that cannot always be explained as mere instinct alone.

“Not that long ago, I would have described what was happening in simpler terms: birds come and go. Now standing still, I am watching them and they are watching me, and we see each other hiding in plain sight.”

Here, Tan shifts the role of the observer away from herself to the birds around her. Frequently, she notes the way birds look at her: purple finches pecking at her window, demanding to be fed, or hummingbirds hovering inches away from her face. In these moments, Tan gets the sense that she, too, is being watched and analyzed, emphasizing reciprocity in nature.

“Would they mourn a crow they didn’t know? Humans do. I have, for the victims of 9/11, for children shot in schools, for fictional characters no less real than a fake crow.”

In Tan’s exploration of Inquiry as a Path to Understanding, she does not avoid anthropomorphizing the birds she observes. In this entry, Tan explains that after she placed a crow decoy to discourage other crows from coming to her yard, the birds gathered around the crow as though mourning a fallen friend. The sight causes Tan to wonder about the nature and scope of their emotionality.

“I see it in my mind sitting on a nearby branch, wet, starved, weakening until it falls to the ground, dead. Such heartbreak comes with love and imagination.”

Once again, Tan emphasizes the need for marking both light and dark in The Art of Paying Attention. Observation requires taking in all data, even the difficult and challenging aspects of what is being perceived. Without accepting both contexts, understanding is limited.

“Each day I look at the birds and they look at me. Each individual bird is different. Each individual has its personality.”

As Tan’s understanding of birds grows, she begins to see them break away from the stereotypical roles attributed to their species. For example, a hermit thrush—known for living up to its name—becomes increasingly social in her backyard. Her ability to distinguish the characteristics of individual birds is dependent on her understanding of contexts, including the context of herself in their lives.

“I had drawn this bird many times, but what was it?…What a transformation it will undergo before it looks like its parent. But already the shapes of a junco are there, just as I had drawn it hundreds of time.”

Tan’s work as an artist and her knowledge of birds are intrinsically linked. As she tries to sketch a seemingly unfamiliar bird, her hand recognizes it before her brain does. The shapes and colors are known to her as an artist even if she cannot immediately recall what the bird type is. This reveals the importance of The Art of Paying Attention and how the details that emerge during observation can expand one’s knowledge.

“I wind up drawing cartoon birds because I am drawing what I think it looks like, and not what I see.”

Here, Tan acknowledges her limitations as an artist, directly associating the inaccuracy of her drawings with her own limited understanding. Rather than embracing Embodiment as Creative Practice, she feels her drawings are restricted by the space between the observer and the bird. This space is perception. Her sketching is impacted by her reflections and preconceived notions about birds until she can focus on the reality of what is in front of her.

“I heard others call a House Sparrow a ‘junk’ bird, an invasive, like the European Starling. I understand the antipathy. Invasive birds usurp habitat and resources. But I can’t help but feel discomfort. The rhetoric is often the same as the racist ones I hear about Chinese people.”

An essential element to Inquiry as a Path to Understanding is allowing conjecture to go where it will. In this passage, Tan begins by wondering about the sparrows and then connects their experiences to her own and those of the greater culture. By following these thought threads about both birds and humans, she expands her understanding of a variety of contexts.

“These fine details made me appreciate this bird even more, and I also felt sadder. I drew it as it looked, its eyes closed, feet already stiffened, the feathers of one wing splayed. A beautiful bird, even in death.”

The dead bird represents another element of the light and dark moments that comprise the natural world. Tan calls the bird “beautiful,” even though death is not something often associated with such a descriptor. In her search for patterns, she begins to see that both beauty and ugliness in life and death contribute to something greater.

“Will I ever know the answer to even one of these questions? For now, I can only imagine what might happen. I am highly skilled at doing that. Stories about lost souls abound in fiction.”

Tan grapples with whether she will have answers to her many questions. Her determination to continue asking, even as her questions remain unanswered, is indicative of what she has learned from Laws about emphasizing practice over product. For Tan, the important thing isn’t knowing the answers but asking the questions in the first place.

“Will this titmouse remain the leader? Is that also how dominance starts? Is it smarter or stronger? Was it the first to leave the nest? Is it the bravest? What is bravery to a bird?”

Here, Tan offers another example of Inquiry as a Path to Understanding. Often in her questions, Tan anthropomorphizes the birds, relating their experiences to her own. She observes the emergence of a fledgling leader among a group of siblings and wonders about the nature of bravery in all animals.

“When I first started noticing birds, I did not recognize any finch species in my yard. Eventually I saw yellow birds and learned they were goldfinches.”

This passage serves as a reminder of Tan’s growth as an artist and birder. When she began, she could only identify three species of birds. In this entry, Tan references birding moments from the past—experiences that are detailed in earlier diary entries. Her reflection reveals how important birding has become to her and how far she has grown in her knowledge.

“Thanks to the birds, I have never felt cooped up staying at home. So much remains new, so much can be discovered. As restricted as we are by the specter of a deadly disease, when watching birds, I feel free.”

In the final section, Tan speaks briefly about COVID-19 and the impact it has had on her and her relationship to birding. She is thankful for the opportunity to practice The Art of Paying Attention. The birds help her feel connected to the world that seems increasingly isolating. Instead of feeling cooped up at home, birding gives her the sense that she is engaging in a more collective experience of life.

“Being up close and personal allows me to see behavior I would not have noticed otherwise.”

Tan applies a new technique to watch birds by setting up a clear box next to a glass door. The act serves as a metaphor for Tan’s entire experience of birding. Each time she brings herself closer to a bird—whether through a handheld hummingbird feeder or throwing seeds on the sill of her bathroom window—she gains new understanding of avian life and herself.

“Trying to figure out a bird’s intentions runs afoul of anthropomorphism. I cannot possibly know what a bird’s intentions are. How do I know what it needs? I remind myself that the guesses are only that. Yet I still can’t help wanting to know what is really going on.”

Tan addresses directly her tendency to apply human characteristics to the birds she observes. She recognizes that scientific research often avoids such anthropomorphizing, but the practice gives her new insight as an artist and writer of human experience. Tan takes an interdisciplinary approach through Embodiment as Creative Practice, simultaneously challenging her perceptions and allowing them to lead her down new paths of inquiry.

“How did the White-throated give the substantially larger towhee the idea that it, too, could fit in? Does the towhee have a sense of its comparative size? How did the towhee make itself smaller so quickly?”

Tan realizes that she is not the only being in her yard engaging in The Art of Paying Attention. After watching a sparrow slip in and out of an enclosed feeder, a towhee learns to slip easily through the wires using a similar technique. An important lesson in Tan’s experience of embodiment is that she and the birds are both watching and influencing one another.

“The logical part of me reasons that there is no special meaning in this kind of randomness coinciding with grief and hope.”

Tan describes the death of a friend and the arrival of three new species in her backyard. She cannot help but wonder if her friend may have something to do with her visitors. This section shows Tan’s adherence to a sense of spiritualism in nature, even as she embraces scientific observation.

“I am aware I have committed the naturalist’s sin of stereotyping the towhee as jolly and Scrub Jay as conniving. Science would require me to be objective and to not let personal bias obstruct more accurate observations. Thank God I am not a scientist.”

Tan is grateful for her unique way of seeing the animals around her. By embracing an interdisciplinary approach and allowing mysticism to infiltrate her work, she feels more connected to her subjects and grows in her knowledge. Tan’s exclamation that she is happy she is not a scientist shows how important approaching her work as an artist first is to her appreciation of her practice.