Video: Wild Scarlet Macaw Chick Exam - Guatemala

A Spiritual Practice of Backyard Birding

I have a daily spiritual practice that includes sitting on my back porch in silence, pondering the lives of birds while also keeping my eyes roaming through the multi-layered habitat of my backyard.  There daily dramas play out among the complex social systems that don’t really have a lot to do with my own ego concerns. 

A few days ago a movement in one young Magnolia tree revealed an immature Red-shouldered hawk that flew to an adjoining tree.  There, in a newly fledged way of beholding the world, he or she watched the ground closely.  Following the hawk’s eyes I saw a Florida Box Turtle ambling along the edge of lawn and woodland, his bambooed patterned shell well worth my gaze, and perhaps the hawk's as well. After several minutes the hawk flew away and the turtle disappeared into the ground cover, perhaps bored with one another and the terrain of our lawn. (I say lawn although that is liberally applied – it’s more like mowed “whatever that wants to grow here, may.”

 

From that same Magnolia tree a Mourning dove fluttered to the ground, followed by a Ruby-throated hummingbird who hovered over the dove and then flew away.  A minute later another dove joined the other, this one too chased by the hummingbird, who in one still moment was the apex of a relationship triangle formed by doves and hummer. 

As I considered my role as observer in this geometric biologic form, the Red-shouldered returned, and as it flew across the back yard, the doves erupted into a whirlwind of wing beats.  Now alone I wondered about my place in this drama playing out between the chaser and the chasee.  Am I just an impartial watcher?  Am I part of their world they create with each other?

I believe that I am.  They respond to each other, and in my distanced voyeurism, I create a beautiful world with them, and now with you.  We each take into our holy interiors stimuli from shared exterior worlds, actors, directors, audiences each of us in every moment as we both chase after beauty and life, and are chased by tragedy and death. 

Seeing these winged wonders play out this ancient chase game, I imagine myself as if a little girl squealing in a game of tag, fearful of the chase yes, while also half wanting to be caught by the fierceness of life and death so that I may remain free.  Tag, this moment is it.

 

 Florida  Box Turtle (photo by Jonathan Zander)

 

California Condor Dreaming

California Condor in the Southwest. Picture by Dan Kunkel

 

I have longed dreamed of seeing California Condors. They call to me nearly as strongly as Ivory-billed Woodpeckers.  Both elicit the response of “Lord God, what a bird!” in many people’s hearts.  For me they also speak about “staying the course” and never giving up, even when all hope appears lost.

 

 

I was active in avian conservation in California when the few remaining condors were rounded up from the wild. The only surviving condors lived in captive propagation centers.  This change devastated me, for I had lost the chance to see those enormous wings throw shadows along a canyon wall, and in so doing, cast out the shadows that lurk in the human heart.  Their wild beauty would never be mine to know, only their death.  For in those years of extinction, I had been called upon to transport a condor egg from one site to another after the chick inside had died.  That was the closest I ever got to a wild condor, until this past week.

 

 

While hiking in Zion National Park in Utah, I rested on a mountain saddle when a great wind came up threatening to blow me off the ridge.  I grabbed onto a pine tree, holding on to dear life.  In that blast of sand and rain, a California Condor soared on an updraft that took her mighty wings almost within my reach.  She seemed impervious to the steep cliffs and powerful winds, as if she knew she belonged to this land.  It was our species who didn’t always know who belonged.  In the past decades the attitudes of hunters, ranchers, farmers, and the general public did not offer much hope that we could change who we were as a species to make room for this endangered bird.  The biologists and wildlife managers though did not give up.  They kept to the course for over two decades and now the Condor soars freely over several Western states. It is still frightfully endangered and with the uncertainty of climate change and diminishing earth resources, there is no guarantee that this species or others shall continue to exist, let alone thrive.  But we know more and more that we humans belong to this land and all beings are our kin.

 

 

We may not be assured of the outcome, but we know that we belong to one another too.  If we promise to one another to walk and work together in all the ways of love, we may yet, like the Condor, soar over the deserts of the hard trodden paths of our longings to live in a world abundant in biodiversity and compassion.  Let this not just be a dream, but a liberating reality.  May the sightings of condors, woodpeckers, and other avian beauty take hold of our hearts and cast out the shadows of despair and sorrow.  My dear readers, join me as we grasp the vision of a beloved community of all species. 

 

Take hold of this future; never give up, never say die,

So that the birds we know and love may always fly!

Inherent Worth and Dignity of Pigeons

This week I am attending the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Salt Lake City.  Thousands of us gather in a beautifully landscaped bowl ringed by snow-topped mountains and infinite sky.  Even from down town we are reminded that we are one with all that is.  Centering moments abound in vista and in worship, but also in the day-to-day acts of hearts willing to see the suffering of others.

 

 

 

Rev. Beth Johnson holding found pigeon and beauty next to her heart

 

Early in the week Rev. Beth Johnson called me on my cell phone from the streets around Temple Square.  She had found a recently fledged pigeon in a parking lot and she wanted to know what to do.  I spoke with her on the phone as I coached her on the possible decisions to make.  My stance is it is better to leave a bird in the wild, especially as parents take care of the fledged chicks even when they can’t fly.  Beth guarded the chick while I called around to see if there was any one who could take the young bird, such as a wildlife rehabilitator.  I found that someone would take the bird, if indeed it was best to take the bird into captivity. 

I met her on the sidewalk; the bird hunkered down between her legs. I quickly discerned that the bird was very thin, weak, and dehydrated.  The night was coming on and no parents were in sight. So I took the bird for the evening to try to feed her so she wouldn’t die in the night. She ate voraciously, regained her energy, and kept me company for the next 18 hours with her peeping song.  The next day Beth and congregational member Barbara took the bird to a sanctuary where the owner said, “Of course I’ll take care of the bird, I love pigeons!”

This seems to me a faith statement, a universal vision that I long for that applies across species and cultural categories, “Of course I will take care of my neighbors, I love life!”

When we can see the beauty of life in one another I believe our species has a chance to bring justice to our world.  In a lecture that was part of Unitarian Universalist University this week, Galen Guengerich quotes Elaine Scarry, “the experience of beauty has a built-in consequence: fairness-refers both to loveliness and to the ethical requirement to be fair, play fair, or distribute fairly.  Beauty issues a call to symmetry and equality, a call to be just.

I bow deep in gratitude for witnessing the beauty of others who see beauty in pigeons. Thank you Rev. Johnson, fledged pigeon, Kay the bird rehabilitator, and the citizens of Salt Lake City who adorn their streets with pigeon art.

 

Transportation stop with pigeon sculpture (with rainbow arc of our covenant with all life)

 

Guatemala Scarlet Macaw Chick Exam

Examining Avian and Human Virtue

At long last I have up a video in three parts that shows the Wildlife Conservation Society team of veterinarians and biologists examining wild Scarlet Macaw nest in Guatemala. It depicts a fairly thorough physical examination of wild parrots that is possible under field conditions. We learned so much about the birds, and about ourselves while doing this work in April of 2009. As you watch these videos perhaps you too can learn about what it means to be human in a community of mixed species, for me a primary religious, ethical, and hence scientific question. Like us, birds have the virtues of caring, compassion, protection, prudence, and nurturance. The parents care for their young, feed them, protect them, treat them with kindness, while also keeping a safe distance from we humans climbing the trees. You can hear the parents calling out in warning while we handle the chicks.

 

Like us, birds are anxious for the well being of other birds.  The calling of the parents echoes our own anxiety about what will happen to the younger chick, and what can we possibly do to save this one bird, let alone an entire species that is under threat from poaching, forest fires, and habitat loss that results from an economic system that is based on addiction – to consumerism, to drugs, to satisfying one’s own needs, now, at the costs of meeting others basic needs.

 

Like us, birds demonstrate perseverance, strength, and adaptability.  The youngest chick in this nest (the second one to be examined) is frightfully thin and over the next several weeks falls further and further behind in weight as her/his sibling thrives. Yet the bird lives for several more weeks as one or both parents still feed the ailing chick.

 

 

Like us, birds are beautiful, defiantly so as it seems against all odds that such a rainbow of colors and social complexity survives from egg to the powerful, gliding adults circling over us during the examination. How did such beauty come into existence and how shall it survive we ask? To answer this question we continue to examine our own lives, our own complicity in a system fraught with harm for ourselves and others, and we continue to examine these birds and their chicks, for the hope of understanding what is ours to do in this world. How shall we liberate ourselves as we liberate the birds, and love ourselves as all our neighbors?

Something Opens Your Wings

Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.  Someone fills the cup in front of us.  We taste only sacredness. – Jelaluddin Rumi

 

Brown Booby (picture by Aviceda)

  

With a call towards migration, I now am on St. John’s, U.S. Virgin Islands.  I come here to serve a small Unitarian Universalist congregation, study, reflect, and quite frankly pursue pastimes that invite sun burns.    When telling people that I was heading here for 12 days I mostly received comments such as “tough luck” or “it must be rough” or “sure, working hard.”  These islands have a reputation for vacations, peace, and “getting away from it all” and I too hope to regenerate my spirit and heart. 

It didn’t take long.  On the ferry ride over from St. Thomas a Brown Booby flew with us.  This marine wonder mirrored the freedom that I have felt when swimming and snorkeling in southern climes.  Surely here peace and love will fill my heart.

 

That evening I check out the St. John newspapers and talk to a few locals.  Their news is full of deadly car accidents propelled by the confusion of alcohol, drugs, gangs, murders, robberies, and “progress” taking away their pristine paradise.  It didn’t take long to remember that there is joy in sorrow and sorrow in joy and even here in my little apartment overlooking the sea, I see, overlooking pain in paradise.  May we never overlook the hurt and the darkness so that wings may always fill our hearts and fill the skies.

 

Be Kind To Animals Week and Humane Sunday

(photo by Andreas Trepte)

 

 

(part of this writing appeared in the Gainesville Sun, May 3rd  as a Letter to the Editor)

 

Be Kind to Animals week starts Sunday, May 3^rd and ends on International Migratory Bird Day on May 9^th.  During this time we humans will be celebrating the blessings of animals in our lives, as well as growing our understandings of how we relate to other beings. It is no simple matter.  We both extol and denigrate animals of all kinds, including our own species.  How we orientate towards life on this planet begins at an early age.

 

When a child I noticed near our home a flock of small falcons circling over an injured falcon on the ground, her wing obviously broken and bleeding. I went to my father for help. He took one look at the bird and went for his gun.  When it became clear what he was going to do, we children began screaming, “Please don’t kill her, please don’t!”  Without a word he fired his gun several times, ending the bird’s suffering, but in my mind he gave up too easily and didn’t seem to care about birds. 

 

In this experience we see the depth of virtue in both bird and human.  The circling falcons were protecting and caring for their injured companion, as were my father and I.  It is so easy though to overlook the bridge of virtue that exists between animals; the virtue of caring that so many species demonstrate each according to their kind.  Instead we judge the other as being unworthy of compassion or care, be it parent, child, bird, or cat

 

No doubt we need to discern the amount of harm others cause to life on this planet.  Here too animals, human and nonhuman, show vices each according to their own kind. I once ran into a hunter in Florida who when he found out that I was a bird veterinarian, remarked, “Aw shucks, I probably shouldn’t tell you this but I shoot hawks. Sometimes it gets so boring on the deer stand that I just have to empty my gun into something.”  We humans are not alone in demonstrating dishonest or harmful behaviors.  Dolphins kill the juveniles of their group, chimpanzees commit infanticide and go to war, and birds of all kinds stray outside their pair bonds exhibiting promiscuous behavior. 

 

Scientists struggle to find causes and evolutionary explanations for these behaviors.  In recent years we are discerning that humans are strongly linked to many other species through our emotional lives that support vices, but also virtuous behavior, such as compassion, fairness, kindness, honesty, forgiveness, and altruism.

 

When I watch other animals I see that there is a continuum of behavior that goes beyond the categories of vice and virtue, good and bad, worthy and unworthy. It is in our nature to be both compassionate and competitive, caring and uncaring, loving and cruel.  During Humane Week we have the chance to study the behavior of other species, embrace who we are, and choose the small steps to develop our own behavior patterns towards the good of all life as we open our hearts and minds to learning and to love.  If we really look we can see that we are not alone on this planet, neither above nor below other species, but all in a circle of life together.  We are here to love ourselves, one another, and the earth.

 

We too can learn this at an early age.  One afternoon about ten years after the incident with the falcon and my father, we were driving together when two woodpeckers flew across the road. One made it clear, but the car ahead of us struck her mate.  My father, pulled over to the side of the road to see what could be done.  There, by the still form of her mate, the surviving woodpecker perched vulnerably on the ground.  She did not fly away as we approached, but stood watch, protecting her mate.  I looked over to my father, the stern one that I so often judged, and he had tears streaming down his face.  In that moment I had reaffirmed my own heart’s calling to love life and that it was possible for we humans to care, to change, to guard life, and to morn together.  In our own watchful presence with other species, we share a silent prayer for animals who act out the drama of their lives each according to their own kind.

 

 

(photo by Nature's Pic's (www.naturespicsonline.com)

 

I invite you this coming week to look, to see, to feel, to mourn, and to celebrate life on this planet in its myriad forms, so that we might treat each other humanely, including our own species.  You may come to our Animal Celebration and Blessing this Sunday at 11 a.m. with your own animal companions.  All species and all generations are welcome.  You may also bring pictures or stuffed animals as we share a universal blessing that binds us all.

May our understanding of the worth and interdependence of all life comfort us and keep all beings from harm.