Liberating Wings

Saving Birds is Catching

 

There must be something in the air.  Yes, as always, there are birds, but sometimes they fall to the ground, and that's when people step up to the plate.

Such was the case of Anaheim Angel relief pitcher  Dane de la Rosa last week during a game with the Oakland Athletics. He spotted a pigeon in trouble in the bull pen area and did something about it - he picked it up until he could turn it over to someone who could protect the bird. After he did he went on to retire the next 3 batters with only 10 pitches, and the bird was released back into the wild.  Nicely done!

 

 

In my own world, we had a nest of wrens on our front porch, which I thought was empty.  The wind blew down the nest and I taped it back up. In the process I saw that the nest held 4 chicks, which successfully fledged a week later, thank goodness in time before we were to leave the house for good as my spouse had gotten a church position in White Plains, NY.  

 

Taped up nest back where the wrens made the nest on our porch

 

A nest for of wren chicks about ready to fledge from our home in Florida, as were we

 

So we left Florida and on our first full day in New York were told of loose birds in the sanctuary of the Community Unitarian Church at White Plains.  I was called upon for advice and discovered that wrens had made a nest in the sanctuary and could come and go from the outside through a hole in the rafters. I asked the church staff to be on the look out for fledglings as they would not be able to fly out of the hole and would be trapped inside. Sure enough, a week later we got a call for the church administrator and my spouse, the Rev. Meredith Garmon, the newly settled minister at the church, and I went up to help the administrator, Liliana Keith, catch the chicks, chase the adults out of the sanctuary, and release the chicks where the parents could see them and care for them.  It was quite comical to see a little bitty weeks old bird scamper away again and again from our hands while a parent was chasing us both with a bug in her mouth.  While on wren duty, we also noticed a robin's nest with 3 chicks.  I was so pleased that our new church home was indeed a sanctuary for all beings. Nicely done CUC!

 

Successful Robin's nest in outside rafters at Community Unitarian Church (CUC)

 

We can't save them every time however.  That same week my spouse gave me a call from New York City, only a short train ride from our new home.  He was attending a conference and during the lunch break was outside at Union Square. Noticing a sparrow unable to right himself and thrashing around, he wanted advice on what to do. After discussing possible disease or injury, I told him to catch the bird and place her in the shade out of the hot sun and under protection from predators. There was a chance that the bird had run into a building and would recover shortly as long as she could be safe. So my spouse spent his lunch time standing guard by the struggling bird, who was joined by another  sparrow.   Before returning to the conference he went to see how the bird was doing, and there, along with the other sparrow and a couple of other humans, they discovered that the bird had died.  The three humans bowed, hands together to honor and mourn the life that had passed.

Another three humans honored a long dead wren chick we found in the sanctuary when we were chasing live chicks. Apparently this bird was from a previous clutch of wrens that had not been as fortunate as the ones that the CUC staff saved.  After a moment of silence we placed the still form up in the church's memorial garden.

 

Sometimes all we can do is witness, and that's important.  To be present to life, to death, to beauty, to suffering, and to compassion is a gift we all can give the world.  It's a gift that can be catching, even for pitchers, and can free us all, birds included.

 

Stone sculpture at CUC with plaque that reads, "Roots hold me close, wings set me free."

Snakes Over a Plain

While in Belize last month I witnessed a small snake attacking and carrying off a frog, whose size was much greater than the snake's head.  I reflect on how we all are caught in the predatory/prey cycle and if we can nurture this nature, perhaps we can find a way to live sustainably as we live the solution.

 

 

 

Flying Free with Intimate Conversations

Blue and Gold Macaw (photo by Sander van der Wel)

 

In January I attended the Parrot Festival in Houston Texas. While there I heard a presentation by Rick Jordan, “The Future of Aviculture.” He expressed views that if we lose the ability for people to own and breed birds in captivity, we will lose a great good for the people involved, and for conservation and avian medicine. Throughout his talk, he said that we all needed to talk to one another, even though we may have different views.

 

In the spirit of his invitation that we should all talk, I met with Rick alone later in the day. I wanted to hear more about him and if he was willing to hear my story. We began talking of our common roots, of how we both had worked at the Aviculture Breeding and Research Center (ABRC) in Loxahatchee, Florida in the late 1980′s. This was a very large avian breeding facility that only in my last months there began to sell the hundreds of birds that hatched there to collectors and to pet owners. I left in part because these birds were so precious to me and I was not comfortable for them to enter the pet trade where many would end up in situations where they would not be adequately cared for over the span of their lives. I spoke of how much I had been a part of aviculture then, like him, and how after listening to him I could see the good that came of it: relationships between people, building a vibrant human community, income, contribution to science, conservation, and veterinary medicine, and fostering human-nonhuman relationships. He agreed and seemed to appreciate this common understanding we had.

 

Rick Jordan, Sharon Wolf, Julie, and Trent at ABRC in 1989 (mock fighting)

 

I then told him that after leaving ABRC I had begun to work almost exclusively with wild parrots, and I had changed. Seeing their complex and beautifully compelling behaviors and social structures, I found it increasingly difficult to work with birds who were not free flying. It was as if the birds had become the “sacred other” and that I longed to be in relationship with them not on my terms, but based on their evolved natural states. I wanted to be part of a system where birds were granted the utmost consideration, compassion and care, and nothing less, and not one that often treated birds as objects of human desire and not as subjects with their own inherent worth and dignity. I claimed this story as my own, and did not mean it as a statement of what Rick should or should not do.

 It was then that Rick amazed me by saying how he resonated with what I had shared. He told of how he had the chance to see free flying Lear’s Macaws in Brazil. When he saw them, he thought, “I’m glad that there are no Lear’s Macaws in the pet trade. They should be free flying.” Rick then told me that when he returned to the U.S. he was depressed with the reality of seeing his parrots in captivity. The beauty of a flying macaw had shaken him to the core. After several months he then had a chance to see a staff member of his bond with a parrot chick, and the love and care expressed by the human to the bird was also a beauty that deeply reached him.

 

Lear's Macaws

 

What surprised us both is how similar we were and how we could get to the heart of what motivated our behavior and relationships with birds. What I also saw was that if we can slow down and hold conversations about our deep appreciation of birds with respect and empathy towards one another, we might harvest the power of relationships between humans, and between humans and birds so that we can make a better life for all. We need all of us at the table to listen and to contribute, because the task before us in conservation and avian welfare is no easy one. There are tragic consequences to our human presence here on this planet, but together, we might just be able to preserve the magnificent splendor of this earth.

 

I am grateful for our conversation for it is with the telling of these kinds of stories that we engage in a process of narrative ethics. We place ourselves in the situation of others, and by being there, work out what is ours to do on behalf of others in this complex world.

 

Thank you Rick for sharing your story with me, and giving me permission to share it with my readers, for I believe that our conversation will help others share likewise, for the sake of all. 

 

Green-winged Macaws (photo by Ricardo Sanchez)

Naming Birds, Taming Egos

 

Don't mind my inexplicable delight

in knowing your name,

little Wilson's Warbler

yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap..

 

Just do what you do and don't worry, dipping

branch by branch down  to the fountain....

 

A name is not a leash.

-Mary Oliver (in Swan)

 

 

 

Just two days ago a man came up to me brimming with ideas for a "bird ministry."  He wanted to teach troubled youth bird identification as a means to connect, focus, and move towards wholeness.  Without dropping a beat I said, "Count me in."  I'll do anything to get people to enjoy beauty, so that they can respond to it.  Though I have degrees in birds and they are my vocation and calling, I've never been overly concerned with their names, or teaching people names.   Beauty is beauty no matter what you call it. In fact, I have seen the pursuit of adding bird names to a "life list" detract from the objective wonder of the bird itself as the ego asserts its control in the field.

 

In this case, however, teaching the names to young people and helping them recognize the individuality of species is a discipline that is liberating.  Identifying birds gives them a choice to contribute as citizen scientists, and is a means to better understand their world.  Naming unleashes the wild possibility within.

 

Here comes the paradox.  We need to "know" names to contribute to this world, and we don't need to know names to contribute wholeness and healing.  Name it and then let go knowing anything about the bird so that you can meld with pure interconnection. 

 

Dogen the Buddhist might write (if he were a Birdist):

 

There is a Wilson's Warbler.

There is not a Wilson's Warbler.

There is a Wilson's Warbler.

 

What might you un-name today?

Owls Get a Kick Out of Soccer

 

There is nothing as liberating as a good soccer game.  It can also be dangerous in parts of the world as soccer has been the inciting stimulus for riots, death threats, murder, and in one case, a war between Honduras and El Salvador. Recently this harm extended to an owl.  A tame barn owl, the mascot of a Columbian soccer team, flew down to the field during a game and was hit by the ball.  While still stunned, Panamanian footballer Luis Moreno kicked the bird off the field.  The bird died two days later, suffering a broken wing and shock. The crowd yelled "murderer," and Moreno had to leave the game under police escort.  Since then he has received threats.  He won't be prosecuted because Columbia has no laws against animal cruelty, although the soccer league penalized him by requiring a fine and banning him from the next two games. 

 

 

This is a painful reminder of how humans in their worst moments do not have the capacity for compassion and care, even when beauty of game and bird surrounds them.  But sometimes we do.

In a 2008 soccer game between Finland and Belgium, a great-horned owl visits the game, flying around the stadium and landing on the goal posts. The officials stopped the game and the crowd cheers and applauds the owl. Smiles and laughter abound.

 

 

 

In another instance, rescuers remove another Great-horned Owl that had become entangled in a soccer net.

 

 

 

There is beauty all around us, and there is nothing as liberating as people responding by loving and saving the birds of our world.  How though do we make sense of our complicated natures where we both get a kick out of birds and kick them?

Sufi poet Rumi writes, "There is a field out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing. I'll meet you there."

On that soccer field, great apes and owls are neither wrong or right. Instead  we are caught up in our goal directed lives, and make tragic choices that harm ourselves and others. 

May we this day see the beauty within and without, and in our gratitude, not penalize the beings of this earth.

 

 

National Bird Day

 It's the turning of the year, and perhaps like me you are thinking of taxes coming due and all that paperwork. Here's a poem by Mary Oliver - "Percy Speaks While I am Doing Taxes."

First of all, I do not want to be doing this.

Second of all, Percy does not want me

  to be doing this.

hanging over my desk like a besieged person

  with a dull pencil and innumerable lists

    of numbers.

 

Outside the water is blue, the sky is clear,

  the tide rising.

Percy, I say, this has to be done. This is

  essential. I'll be finished eventually.

 

Keep me in your thoughts, he replies. Just because

  I can't count to ten doesn't mean

I don't remember yesterday, or anticipate today.

  I give you one more hour, then we step out

into the beautiful, money-deaf gift of the world

and run.

 

Just this last month I read about language research with a dog who knew more than 1000 words.  They do understand a lot.

Currently I am reading the book, "Parrot Behavior" and just yesterday read about parrots that that understand not just hundreds of words, but can combine words into sentences.  They do understand a lot.

All of this reminds me of the movie, "Forest Gump" where Forest says, "I may not be smart, but I know what love is."

No matter how we see the intelligence of another being, whether it is comparable to humans or to other species or not, I do believe that we share with the other social vertebrates a common neural structure of emotional responses that evolved out of this beautiful earth.

Baby, we were born to run, to love, and feel deep gratitude for the gifts around us.

And in light of it being National Bird Day, I offer deep bows of gratitude those who were born to fly!

 

What were you born to do?

 

 

 

 

 

The Year of the Sparrow

 Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis)

 

I have never really thought much about sparrows, but this seems to be changing.  In my other blog reflecting on Mary Oliver's poetry, sparrows have come up frequently in her poems and my writing.  Then on Sunday, as part of the local Christmas Bird Count, I was a member of a counting circle that emphasized sparrows. We formed "sparrow lines" to flush out and identify the birds. Okay, I was more of flusher than an identifier.  Only two days later I received in the mail rather serendipitously a promotional nature calendar whose subject  was...wait for it....sparrows!

Then yesterday this story was brought to  my attention:

"Tell me, how much is a snowflake in weight?" asked a sparrow a wild pigeon.
"Not more than nothing" was the answer. 

"Then", the sparrow says, "I want to tell you a wonderful story: I was
sitting on a branch of a pine tree, close to the trunk when it started to
snow. Not much, not like in a storm. No, it was like in a dream, without
any touch of intensity. Because I did not have anything else to do I started
to count those snowflakes which fell on my branch and the needles. Their
number was 3 741 952. When the next snowflake fell on the branch - not
more than a nothing as you said - the branch broke." 

The sparrow did not say more, he took off. 

The pigeon, which is supposed to be an authority since Noah in this topic,
thought a while about this story and then said to itself: May be there is
only one voice missing on our earth that peace will be in our world. 

Is yours the missing voice?

Is it the sparrows?

Is it mine?

What I am learning, oh Lord, ever so slowly, is that all beings matter, for each sings a song of life, and of death. 

So to affirm this knowing I plan to embody this song.  I shall learn more about sparrows this year.  Let them no longer be unidentifiable "little-brown'jobs" but daily miracles to discern.

May I in this year come to know the voices in the field as I add my song to theirs.

Whose voice shall you join this year?

 

The Lama of Birds

Tashi Sange. Photo: Geng Dong

 

Tibetan Buddhism produces much for us to admire, including now a lama of birds.  Tashi Sange, also known as the Bird Whisperer, dedicates his life to protecting the environment and birds of his homeland of Tibet.

Sange always loved birds, even before he moved to a Temple at 13 years of age.  Sange spent much of his free time at the temple observing birds, whom he imagined were his father and mother.  When he reached 15,  he began recording his observations, later to draw and paint his subjects, and thus his hobby turned into a lifetime passion.

One interviewer, Geng Dong, said "He regards birds as his friends. I remembered he once whispered to a Tibetan Bunting just like he was speaking to close friends."  Geng adds,  "I think he got a lot from Tibetan Buddhism, such as the equal rights of human beings with other life and the harmonious coexistence between nature and humans."

I wonder if his love of birds came before his path of Buddhism, a path he uses to sustain research and conservation for over 25 years.

This is the order at which I came to religion, birds, and conservation.  As a child I spent my days with birds, talking and singing to them as I wandered the fields and woods of my childhood.  Their songs led me to conservation and my religious calling as a Unitarian Universalist minister.   I came to Unitarian Universalism and my spiritual practices sprinkled with Sufism, Buddhism, and nature spirituality only 13 years ago. What if, instead, I had entered on this path at age 13 as did Sange.  Perhaps I could have given so much more in return for the company of birds.

No matter the past, the question now is how to sustain ourselves into the future.  

What do you do to sustain your efforts?  

 

Mary Oliver Helps Us Mourn

 

From This River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink

 

But when I came back I found

That the body of the river was dying.

 

“Did it speak?”

 

Yes, it sang out the old songs, but faintly.

 

“What will you do?

 

I will grieve of course, but that’s nothing.

 

“What, precisely, will you grieve for?”

 

For the river.  For myself, my lost

Joyfulness. For the children who will not

Know what a river can be – a friend, a

Companion, a hint of heaven.

 

“Isn’t this somewhat overplayed?”

 

I said: it can be a friend.  Companion.  A hint of heaven.

 Mary Oliver

 

 

Here I am back in Guatemala after a 6 month absence. When last here I posted my blogs in the form of tweets. Somehow this seemed appropriate to use a medium of communication that relates to the diminishing bird song.  The calls of Scarlet Macaws are long gone from nearly all of Guatemala, and the Yellow-naped Amazon calls are fainter each time I come.  I mourn.

 

There was a time when I was unsure of my mourning. It was if I was the only one who knew how abundant the harmony of multiple species of parrot calls here was in the south coast of Guatemala.  People who would see my tears and read my words wondered if I was overplaying the loss. They hadn’t looked into the regretful eyes of older campesinos who tell stories of macaws, amazons, and parakeets all nesting in one giant tree.  Now it’s hard to find even the trees, let alone the birds.

 

In this poem Mary repeats to the skeptic about her friendship with the river. Perhaps she too has felt isolated with the rivers going with no one on the shores to grieve with her, as if the river song was nothing of importance.  But it is.  Mary, you, and I have company now as the rivers leave us high and dry.

In the book, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, I read yesterday how psychologists, counselors, therapists, and scientists are increasingly aware of the illness and woundedness of humans who witness ecological devastation and extinction.  Writes Mary Watkins in the chapter, Creating Restorative Ecotherapuetic Practices, “I grasped and acknowledged that the plant and animal worlds were a source of primary attachment, a significant contributor to their (her patients) resilience in the face of great difficulties and disappointments in human life, and a wellspring of faith in beauty and goodness.”  Rivers, trees, birds, mountains, oceans, and flowers all befriend our kind.  So I am glad that it is more mainstream to grieve together as a community of mixed species.  That’s step one and it is hardly nothing.  We must hear and sing death songs, as Mary describes in my blog of two days go.  But what next?

 

 

On my part,  I will go in two days to the place we called "Parrot Paradise" where once there were hundreds of parrots and see if any songs remain.  In scientific terms, |will be doing a quarterly count of a parrot roost site so we can document the falling numbers of parrots in this area.  In heart terms mixed with the science, I shall grieve and tell the world about it in journal, conference, presentation, and wail.

 

What will you do?

 

 

 

Companions and Compassion

 Exodor 

I lived with a Nanday Conure by the name of Exodor for 23 years.  He died in 2003.  I still have his egg and have an image of one of his feathers as a tattoo.  More than anything the image of his beautiful and graceful self is engraved in my heart for ever.  He had such spunk, courage, deep intelligence, and loyalty. He lived with me all over including California, Alaska, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, and Guatemala.  There are hundreds of stories I could tell that would testify to his inherent worth and dignity, but perhaps more than anything I recall is the beauty of his flight as he flew across the room to join me with that high pitched call that screamed out "I'm so alive, I'm so glad to see you, I'm such a conure!"

Because of my deep bond with him I am especially attuned to others of his species.  A few years ago I was in St. Petersburg. I heard a squawk and my heart leaped. Sure enough there was family of Nandays coming in and out of a nest cavity in a palm tree in a parking lot.  I was so enamored with them that I took my spouse back there a few months later to celebrate our anniversary what we now fondly know of as "St. Parrotsburg."  We spent the day walking around the down town area chasing Nandays, Quakers, and various other kinds of free flying parrots that were far from their original lands. 

 

Nandays in Sarasota 

The countries of origin though don't seem so far away now that I have known Nandays.  Through Exodor I am forever called to pay attention to wild parrots, and care for them.  For now I know how they are like feathered angels, gifting us with a picture of heaven on earth where all beings belong. 

 (photo by Robert Blanchard) 

Others have been gifted to with this connection of wild and companion birds.  Recently I have become friends with Marc Johnson and Karen Windsor of Foster Parrots.  I am so taken with them and their projects in in Guyana.  I interviewed them and highlighted their work on my other blog, Lafeber Conservation and Wildlife.   Here's is what I found.  They know power and are yielding it well, if not with discomfort and pain on their part. Because in their work with companion birds where they love them, care for them, sacrifice for them, and witness to their beauty and their suffering, they can draw on authentic  motivations to address the situation of the free flying wild counterparts in Guyana and other countries.  They do not keep their heart and dedication enclosed into a box, but extend it out to other species, including their fellow great apes - humans.  This is perhaps the hardest piece, loving our human neighbors as ourselves in our mixed species communities. 

I have struggled mightily with this, for I wish to blame someone for the pain and loss of our beautiful world.  Somehow, though, I know that blame is not the answer. For simply, if there is not enough love, compassion, or beauty in the world, then I will do everything I can for there to be more, and not less.  This means that I must undertake to see the beauty in all of life and in the whole. This includes we humans.  We need us all at the table so we can nourish one another, so that the earth and all her beings may flourish. 

A simple message, but a most difficult one to follow through on.

So I write here to gather us all together so that we might support one another towards a more compassionate world - liberating ourselves as we liberate the birds we love.

Thank you Marc and Karen. For through your work, you give we humans the opportunity to be who we are and were always supposed to be.

 Marc Johnson, Karen Windsor, and Friends