The Backyard Bird Chronicles

by Amy Tan

Drawing something, like birds, actually depends more on your knowledge of the subject than on your drawing ability. And it is a deep and intangible sort of knowledge. Imagine your very wise birding mentor saying, “Yes, it is black with a yellow head…but do you really know what that bird looks like?” Drawing requires you to absorb details and then to combine them into a simplified and unified whole. Watching birds for countless hours is the way to get to know them, and drawing is the test to demonstrate that knowledge.

The drawing is, in a way, like discovering

the birds anew, as they appear on your paper. It usually means testing lines and shapes, erasing, adding a curve, sharpening or softening an edge, working to find the details that re-create the essence of the bird in a drawing. And when that...

There are patterns everywhere, of course—for example, in regional styles of cooking or in the kinds of ads we see online—but I believe that we have a special affinity for the patterns of nature. The birds themselves provide an endless fascination of patterns—colors, shapes, sounds, movements, migration, nesting cycles, et cetera. Even more important, learning about birds opens a door to the entire natural world.

In the same way that having a friend in a distant city heightens our awareness of things that happen there, getting

to know birds adds meaning and context to everything that is affecting their lives. We notice rain, wind, insects, frogs. We become attuned to plant communities—the countless variations of “woods” and “fields” and “mudflats,” each preferred by different species of birds. We think about dinosaurs (the ancestors of birds), ice ages, ocean currents, continental drift, and evolution. We think about geography; even in a California backya...

It fulfills a deep and instinctive urge to plug into the rhythms of what is happening around us. It makes us part of something larger and gives us a sense of our place on earth.

The birds that inhabit Amy Tan’s backyard seem a lot like the characters in her novels. I can imagine this book being the notes for a new story with the cast of characters including the nonconformist Hermit Thrush, the comical towhee, the tiny but fearless hummingbird. Their lives intersect, diverge, collide. Some stay on the same few acres for their whole lives, raising families and enduring through changing seasons, floods, droughts, and predators. Others travel halfway across the globe to get there, trading the lean season for a daunting migration, with stories of loss and triumph, and a fierce and elegant determination to survive. It is a sweeping epic that spans generations and continents, and birds bring it to your backyard.

As Amy writes in one entry: “Thanks to the birds, I have never felt cooped up staying at home. So much remains new, so much can be discovered…when watching birds, I feel free.”

I climbed into the crook of a dead apple tree and when I slipped down out of control, a rusty nail gouged my knee deep into flesh. I never cried, and I still have that one-inch-diameter scar on the side of my knee, which I have unconsciously rubbed so often over the years I have made threadbare spots on many of my pants. The scar remains a badge of bravery and disobedience, a memento of my childhood when I made discoveries on my own, ones so exciting they overrode caution.

It was pleasure without criticism, without the expectation it had to serve a future productive purpose. It was a refuge from the overwhelming craziness of a mother who often threatened to kill herself. I once ran away from home to go live in that creek, which became a brief stay when my mother offered me a tuna fish sandwich for lunch. Those three years in childhood ingrained not just my love of nature but my need for it.

“As you look at the bird, try to feel the life within it.” For me that meant “Be the bird.” That came naturally to me as a fiction writer. To feel the life of the story,

I always imagine I am the character I am creating.

She embodies what Jack describes as “intentional curiosity,” what leads us to deep observation and wonderment. Questions that beget more questions are the fertile spores that can lead you deeper into the forest.

Unlike fiction, I didn’t need to hope the story pulled together. The story was the moment in front of me, one day, one page, one sketch. Yet I also think my impulse to observe birds comes from the same one that led me to become a fiction writer. By disposition, I am an observer.

With both fiction and birds, I think about existence, the span of life, from conception to birth to survival to death to remembrance by others. I reflect on mortality, the strangeness of it, the inevitability. I do that daily, and not with dread, but with awareness that life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images, there for pondering, for reviving the bird and my heart. With every novel I finish I think it’s a miracle because three or four predecessors never came to life. With every adult bird I see, I think it’s a miracle it is before me, because 75 percent of young songbirds die before

the end of their first year. When I try to find the right image and words that capture an emotion, I must beat down clichés and homilies, which are devoid of fresh thought and honest contemplation. When I see a bird that has died, I don’t accept the sanguine saying, “It’s the circle of life.” It is good to mourn and wish it weren’t so.

I remembered what Jack Laws said: “Feel the bird. Be the bird.” What did the hummingbird see in my eyes? Is that how a bird evaluates trustworthiness? As he fed, I examined the tiny feathers on his head, the pink, orange, and red color at his throat, the wing blur, the exquisitely tiny feet. I tried to mentally recite what I was seeing, so I could later draw the hummingbird: The overlay of tiny feathers on its head are successively larger as they move from the front of the bill toward the back of the head. The legs are short and its toes are the width of dental floss. What is he noting about me?

An hour later, I was seated at the patio table eating lunch when I heard the familiar sound of beating wings around my head. I am certain he was the same hummingbird, because when I held up the feeder he immediately settled and started feeding. After a minute, he flew up to my face, inches away, eye to eye. I could feel a little breeze coming off his wings. He seemed fearless, and I was slightly concerned his little sword would pierce my eye. Was he curious? Was he being aggressive, warning me that he owned the feeder? Whatever his meaning, he had come back. He had acknowledged me. We have a relationship. I am in love.

The Pine Siskins are very messy eaters. I find all the finches are slobs. For every seed they eat, they reject four and toss them on the ground. I don’t know the reason for this wasteful behavior, but their sloppy spillage makes the juncos

very happy. Food conveniently delivered to the ground.

I once thought birds ate grit because they were starving and would fill their belly with anything that was the equivalent of stone soup. Poor birds! Then an ornithologist told me that birds have to eat grit to aid in digestion. Oh.

Like some people, the finches want whatever other birds have, as if what others have is better than what they have. One Lesser Goldfinch occupied a perch at a seed feeder that a female House Finch wanted. There were several open perches. But no, the newcomer was insistent she had to have the one the Lesser Goldfinch had its little tush on. The House Finch loomed over the goldfinch.

When I first saw this tiny bird on the suet feeder a couple of months ago, I experienced what I call “New Bird Tachycardia,” palpitations from the excitement of spotting a species that I have never before seen in my yard.

But now I’ve finally found the solution. Hot Pepper Suet, also from Wild Birds Unlimited. I accidentally touched my eye after handling the stuff and thought I was going to be forever blind. Inferno-strength stuff. And here’s the proof: The squirrels no longer raid the feeders. They don’t even bother to come by for a sentimental look-see. The birds, on the other hand, aren’t bothered by the hot pepper at all. I was told that birds have no taste buds. I later read that birds can indeed smell and taste, but not enough to be bothered by spicy food. Who knows, maybe they find the chili-infused suet tastes better than the brand with lower-quality insect heads. Review of Amy’s Bistro: Sichuan offerings. Highly recommend.