Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing
By Lili Taylor
Crown
A recent Holderness Family video features wife/mom Kim telling herself, at a DEAD (Department of Everyone Ages Department) appointment, that because she’s approaching 50, she’ll suddenly develop an obsessive interest in birds. “It’s just one of those weird things that happens as you age!” Kim says.
Strange but so often true. I’m not exactly sure why, but since turning 50, I’ve been drawn to books like Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Jennifer Ackerman’s What an Owl Knows, and Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows. Would it be a stretch to suggest that many empty nesters (and those of us fast approaching this parenting phase), while processing a new absence at home, simply turn their gaze and care to literal nests?
Perhaps. Regardless of my theory, however, you’ll now understand why I picked up actress Lili Taylor’s new book Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing.
The title isn’t particularly apt for what this book iss: a collection of essays chronicling Taylor’s adventures in birding. (The subtitle had me expecting some discussion of meditation and unplugging, but that’s dead wrong.)
Taylor grew interested in birds 15 years ago, while on a sabbatical from what had been an overwhelming work schedule. Living in upstate New York, away from loud city life, Taylor grew increasingly aware of the local birds’ distinct chirps and squawks. She set out to learn more.
Taylor’s not exactly a wonk, but she’s since become a board member of the National Audobon Society, the American Birding Association, and the New York City Bird Alliance. In her introduction, she writes, “Now, why would someone be interested in a book about birds by an actor? … In the simplest terms, I want to share what I see and hear, specifically in regard to birds and acting, with you, the reader. I think the two are connected in important ways that illuminate something bigger about who we are and how we can be in the world.”
Taylor’s intro labors to forge this connection between birding and acting – and I do mean “labors.” She unpacks certain words’ Latin roots. She quotes philosophers and acting teachers, straining, it would seem, to demonstrate the intellectual weight of validity of her stated goal.
To be honest, this part bored me, while the rest of the book – wherein Taylor sheds this self-consciousness and simply shares stories about her various birding experiences – is often fascinating and charming. Most essays are named for the bird that plays a starring role in the tale (with gorgeous accompanying illustrations by Anna Koska). You follow Taylor as she attends her first birding festival in Ohio; judges a bird tattoo contest; camps out in a lawn chair in Texas to watch chimney swifts roost; tries to help confused birds trapped in light beams during a September 11th memorial ceremony; sets up nest boxes while working on far-flung film sets; and wages war with house sparrows who kill a bluebird family’s fledglings.
You realize, upon reading Taylor’s accounts, that once you’re tuned in to this seemingly secret micro world that’s always been around you, you can never un-see/hear it. Your awareness not only starts shaping your day-to-day behavior, but inspires you to make pilgrimages to places like Nebraska to watch sandhill cranes awake in a cold at sunrise, or to an old elementary school that has a chimney.
Of the latter, Taylor writes, “There were no swifts in sight. And there might not be. What’s tricky about searching for roosts is this: swift arrival times can vary, and chimney preference can as well. I’ve waited at a chimney, believing it was the winner, only to have no swifts appear. I’ve left chimneys that seemed like a dead-end date and raced to another that had promise but that also turned into a dead-end date. I’ve raced back to the first chimney, just in case, and gotten there as the last swift was taking its bow.”
Taylor’s stories manage to both teach us about birds and convey that mania that afflicts many birders. You also get to figure out, along the way, the reason for their intense fascination: birds seem like magical, mysterious creatures (dinosaur relatives!) we’ll never wholly understand. In a time when wonder – something that truly lifts your spirits – feels increasingly hard to come by, the idea of simply paying more attention to what’s already around you for a hit of awe is seductive.
As Taylor writes, “You don’t have to do much to get a lot in the natural world. If you provide, they will come. The animals will come. And the people will come, too, in the sense that our empathy or curiosity will arrive once the animal does, if we notice it. If we pay attention, it is there for the taking.”
