I live only a short walk from where the great Mahican sachem Skiwais lived (c. 1645). While technically I do not live in New England, I can drive there in twenty minutes from my home. If I continue for another two hours, I can reach Concord, Massachusetts, where Walden Pond is located. That is where, in 1845, Henry David Thoreau lived for twenty-six months and two days.
The Mahicans had, as did Thoreau, a great appreciation for the wilderness and wildlife with whom they shared the land, in particular, for birds. The Iroquois of my region believed that when Atahensic (the woman who fell from the sky) hurtled to the earth, it was the birds who came to her rescue by bringing her soil from the bottom of the ocean to create land on the back of a giant turtle. Birds (specifically ravens) likewise came to the prophet Elijah’s rescue in the wilderness (I Kings 17:2 ff.). And, of course, it was a dove that brought the glad tidings to Noah that there was once again dry land (Genesis 8:11) many years before. We’re told earlier in Genesis that birds were created on the fifth day.
Aesop featured birds prominently in his Fables. Altogther, there are at least five fables where a bird is pitted against a fox, a grasshopped or an ant. In the fable The Owl and the Grasshopper, we learn that for all the knowledge the grasshopper brags about, the owl reminds it that true wisdom and understanding comes with age (and the longevity of a grasshopper is short.)
But to the Mahican’s and their cousins the Algonquins, birds carried a symbolism lost to the ages. The majestic eagle was seen as a messenger of the Great Spirit. The feathers of eagles are symbolically linked to honor and respect. Other raptors such as hawks were credited with vigilance, hunting skills and protection. Owls were associated with wisdom and intuition, but at other times they portended misfortune and death. Furthermore, there were clans among the tribes such as the Heron Clan, or the Snipe Clan or the Hawk Clan.
So, to the native Americans, not just in the northeast but across the continent, different birds were of more or less significance to the different tribes. To native Americans, the bird was a bridge between the natural and the supernatural worlds and birds of any sort were respected and revered.
Thoreau’s favorite bird was perhaps the loon, and I can readily understand why. When I was seven or eight, I used to get up before dark on summer mornings and walk a quarter of a mile to a place called Eichman’s Pond. “Ike” had several row boats at his makeshift dock, but as far as I know, I was the only one who ever used them. It cost me five dollars a day to rent one, and that was a king’s ransom to a seven-year-old growing up in 1956. The pond was the size of maybe half of Central Park in NYC, but to a small boy, everything looked larger than life. I would catch catfish, sunfish, perch, bluegills and (if I was lucky) pickerel. But sitting in the boat fifty feet off shore I could hear the loons screeching as the sun rose over the tress. It was a haunting sound not soon forgotten.
Thoreau was a writer, an activist and a naturalist who understood the value of nature. In Walden Pond he writes:
“We need the tonic of wildness—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hearing the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”
To Thoreau, it is much more than just invigorating; it is regenerative. Thoreau spent two years at Walden Pond to understand what was important in life and to consider just where he fit in a rapidly changing world.
Like Thoreau and the great sachem Skiwais before him, birds are an important element in my life as well. There are the birds of fall, such as the majestic Canadian geese flying overhead; the aves of winter, such as the lovable little chickadees; and the return of the robins in spring, which remind us that fairer days are ahead. But the birds of summer are particularly enjoyable to me. I could watch barn swallows for hours as they fly at terrific speeds, only to turn on a dime. American crows, northern cardinals, house sparrows, Swainson’s thrush, mourning doves, downy and hairy woodpeckers, flickers, evening grosbeaks, and goldfinches—all of these birds live in or visit the trees around our house. Some birds, such as flickers and red-winged blackbirds, leave for the south when summer is over.
During the summer, birds are concerned with raising their broods. Near the end of the summer, a number of species have already left to head south. Birds need to stay cool during the summer; they have body temperatures of 105 to 109 degrees F. They take baths when they can find water and then fluff or puff up their feathers to increase ventilation. At rest, birds have pulses that range from 150 to 350 beats per minute and a blood pressure of 180/105 or higher, with significant variation among different birds and circumstances. Birds have four-chambered hearts, the same as people do, and an EKG of a bird looks a good deal like the EKG of a human.
Parrots, budgies, and parakeets are capable of human speech, though crows, myna birds, ravens, magpies, and others can reproduce words with less clarity, partly because they lack human vocal cords and lips. Usually, speech is limited to a small number of words, but budgies have been reported to have vocabularies of more than 1,500 words. Less certain is whether the bird understands what it is saying or if it is just “parroting” what it has heard.
Birds can exhibit obsessive-compulsive behavior; witness woodpeckers and car mirrors as an example. The bird coincidentally sees its reflection in the side mirror of a car or truck and attacks it, thereby breaking the glass. Once a bird does this, it becomes a difficult habit to break, and many different insurance claims are ultimately filed before a solution is discovered. Different birds use objects found in nature as tools, though no such bird lives in the northeastern U.S. Eagles, ospreys, geese, vultures, and barn owls, as well as other birds, are monogamous in that they mate for life.
The use of objects as tools suggests that birds are intelligent. In fact, some species are as intelligent as primates, let alone mammals. They can solve problems, they have complicated social interaction patterns, and they can communicate information to one another (such as warnings). Blue jays and chickadees can remember literally hundreds of places that they’ve cached food. Birds can cooperate as well as compete with each other. Furthermore, the more common birds, such as sparrows and finches, can recognize human faces and approach a human “friend” in a familiar and unguarded way while avoiding strangers completely.
Many birds can sense danger before it occurs; perhaps because they can detect fine barometric pressure changes that humans are insensible to, as well as changes in the wind and temperature, birds can seek shelter before a storm. Less established is their ability to “predict” earthquakes; though there is anecdotal evidence that they are sensitive to electromagnetic changes and perhaps minute vibrations.
Lately Avian Flu (H5N1) have killed likely millions of birds and fowl in the U.S., so it is a good idea not to handle feral birds, especially when the flu is present in the country. This is because the Avian Flu is able to cross the species barrier and make people sick, often with deadly consequence.
