41 pages • 1 hour read
Amy TanThe Backyard Bird Chronicles
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 126-183Chapter Summaries & Analyses
January 1, 2020–December 9, 2020 Summary
For a year, Tan heard a clicking sound like someone typing on a typewriter. She invites Fiona over on Christmas Day to observe birds in the backyard. Fiona shows Tan that the typing noise she hears is coming from a ruby-crowned kinglet and helps Tan find it in a nearby oak tree. Tan is excited to have another new species in her backyard and hopes more will come. Watching them helps her to set aside a sense of dread she feels about the trajectory of the world.
Other noises cause worry. When the chickadees let off alarm calls, Tan spots a red-shouldered hawk watching her feeders. She knows that her songbirds are safe for now, as the hawk focuses its attention mainly on rats.
Tan heightens her observation skills. She watches California towhees move through the yard as though they are landlords, their large bellies leading their slow wandering. Anna’s hummingbirds drain the feeders right before bed, which Tan realizes is because torpor requires as much energy as possible. Birds avoid yellowjackets feasting on mealworms, and dominance behaviors emerge even at the bird bath. After discovering that the reason finches discard so many seeds is that they are searching for only dense, oil-rich food. Tan sets up an elaborate system that allows the discarded seeds to fall into pans for other birds to eat.
Tan considers the eating habits of many of her avian friends. After learning about the habits of food-rich squirrels, she wonders about California scrub jays. One resource suggests that the jays store between 3,500 and 6,000 acorns a year. By watching the eating habits of birds, Tan determines that migrants eat more in one sitting as they fuel for long journeys.
This section is the first to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, as Tan makes small references to what is happening outside of the safety of her little backyard. Another wildfire forces a new type of bird, one that is not native to her area, into her yard: a Western bluebird. As the world around Tan changes, she sees alterations in the small shifts at her bird feeders.
As COVID-19 forces everyone into lockdown, Tan is grateful to have an absorbing hobby. The birds’ familiar habits give her a sense of normalcy: “I don’t mind staying at home. I’m grateful to have a home with a yard, where birds are not aware that anything is amiss. They are too busy getting prepared for nesting season” (135). She watches an oak titmouse make the final preparations for her nest, using alpaca wool that Tan left out for expectant mothers. When four oak titmice fledglings appear, Tan is happy for the mother’s successful rearing.
The four titmice offer Tan much to observe. One bird emerges as the leader of the other three, taking charge in adventures and trying new things. The bird’s siblings watch the brave fledgling and imitate its actions. The birds play follow-the-leader and try out every perch. They watch other species and imitate their actions. While watching a titmouse open a seed with its feet, one of the fledglings tries it too. The titmice also show Tan that birds love to play. They spend time swinging for pleasure from a small swing she installed in the yard, as does a junco that forces the swing to move back and forth by puffing out his chest.
Other baby birds offer new lessons. Tan had previously paid little attention to crows, viewing them as a nuisance that keeps smaller, songbirds away from the feeders. After watching an adult crow groom a fledgling, she cannot help but draw a correlation to the affectionate actions and experiences of people.
Pages 126-183 Analysis
In this section, Tan references COVID-19 and other events, relating them to her observations of birds. Although she does not yet know at the beginning of the section that she will soon be in lockdown, she experiences worry for the world around her and finds solace in birding: “More new birds will come, I can feel it. I cannot command them to come, so when they do visit, I feel hope enough to override the dread I sometimes fear for what may be coming for planet Earth” (126). Tan’s comment alludes to climate change and political turmoil. Yet, it also foreshadows what is to come.
These references contribute to the theme of Embodiment as Creative Practice. Tan understands now that context is important, that it determines so much of what happens for people and birds. She recognizes that she, too, is context for the birds. They observe her, take cues from her, and are impacted by her existence in their lives. By expanding her writing to consider larger contexts for both herself and the birds in her yard, she develops a more ecological understanding of how different factors relate to one another.
Tan’s use of embodiment also brings new insight as she considers species that she previously paid little attention to or had dismissed. For example, Tan never paid much attention to crows, viewing them as an obstruction to the birds she really wanted to watch in her yard: the smaller, rarer songbirds. Yet, when she watches an adult crow clean the feathers of a fledgling, Tan considers that the rowdy and self-surviving juveniles will one day end up a part of a complex and cooperative family group. Tan puts herself in the place of the birds, relating their experiences and emotions to those of a human’s, reaching for new understanding and meaning. She questions whether the practice of grooming is utilitarian or based on love:
Are the adults searching for mites or loose feathers? Is any of this grooming a parent crow’s version of affection? What is human love if not feeding, cleaning, protecting, teaching, and tirelessly attending to the baby’s other needs twenty-four hours a day? By that anthropomorphic model, crows, as well as all the birds I see, meet the behavioral criteria of demonstrating something that is at least akin to love (150).
This section exemplifies Inquiry as a Path to Understanding. Although Tan’s anthropomorphizing of birds would be looked down upon in scientific communities, it draws her closer to a collective understanding of being within an artistic context. It also forces her to set aside biases or perceptions about the behaviors of birds—the tendency to demote their actions to mere biological instinct. Tan questions whether birds are engaging in complex relationships in a similar way that humans do. She dares to ask whether they love.
This removal of bias is central to The Art of Paying Attention. Tan learns that observation and understanding require openness. The fledgling titmice become an important symbol of learning in Tan’s work. As she observes them, she sees how their curriculum of learning mirrors her own. Like the writer, the titmice learn by observing. One fledgling watches a chickadee open a seed by smashing it with its feet. Soon, the titmouse imitates the behavior. Tan also gets the sense that the birds are observing her, taking note of her own actions and behaviors.
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By Amy Tan
