Why I Love Birds

Birds are magical creatures that can effortlessly take flight, and thus show so easily what it is to be free. We humans who would like to be birds, are trapped in our bodies.

“The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life,—large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song. The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds,—how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!”
—John Burroughs [1837-1921], American naturalist, Birds and Poets (1877)

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

I love birds. I love birds for many reasons and during all of the seasons. I love birds for their beauty, their stillness, their elegance in flight. Their ability to reach new heights. The flutter of their wings, the mighty songs they sing, the pitter patter of their feet. I love birds for their poetry, as Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson write, two notables of some literary and poetic might. That was some creative and poetic fun; a bird made me do it, because birds are not to be outdone.

I write this watching my bird companion, Arya the Cockatiel. I love birds, and I especially love Arya. He is currently preening himself for what seems like the umpteenth time today. Arya has a preening routine, a routine that says which feathers he does first, which feathers he does next, and which feathers he does last. I read somewhere that cockatiels have 5,000 feathers. No, Arya has neither confirmed as much as true nor does he preen all his feathers at one session. This would not be possible.

Even so, I watch with fascination, even though I have seen Arya go through his preening routine countless number of times. There is a reason why I continue to watch and observe.

I am fascinated with birds. As I am fascinated with the bird now in front of me, acting every much his bird self, his bird being, and not with any noticeable sense of self-consciousness. We humans are burdened with a heavy weight of self-consciousness, which can be translated to moral responsibility. But more often than not, it is just a weight, a millstone, a heavy burden that weighs us down.

We remain on the ground. But we are not really grounded. Some of us are to some degree or extent, but most people it would seem, are not. Not in the full sense of the word’s meaning—to be in harmony with ourselves and our environment, the natural world. We do not, for the most part, even have that as a benefit to our human selves.

Not so for Arya or his feathered brethren; they are not burdened with such human ideas and ideals. They are birds with bird brains (not a negative, but a positive, in my view) and they just easily and effortlessly, or so it seems, open their wings, jump off and take flight. It happens quickly.

Arya in Thoughtful Repose. Photo by Perry J. Greenbaum

A thought just entered my mind, a haunting but poignant line of poetry from the 1977 Eagles song, “Hotel California”:

We are all here, just prisoners of our own device

How fitting to play it here and now almost 50 years later on a post on beautiful birds and their flights of freedom. I think I ought to play the whole song, for your listening pleasure, a reminder, a memory of 1977. Yes, it was a different time with much less technology that is available today. There was no internet, no smartphones and no home computers. There were no compact discs (CDs), no digital video discs (DVDs), no streaming services, just records and tapes.

There were also a lot more birds in North America; three billion more birds than we have today, according to science. Much of it is due to loss of habitat and increased use of harmful pesticides for agriculture—all due to human activity fuelled by no less a strong feeling or emotion than hubris. Hubris that says humans can and ought to do as we please. That it is our right. We are all here, just prisoners of our own device.

The Earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years; with homo sapiens (modern humans) evolving no more than 300,000 years ago. In other words, humans are a relative newcomer to Earth.

Birds, on the other hand, date to 150 million years ago, with the scientific consensus saying they evolved from dinosaurs. All this to say, humans as newcomers, have done so much to make the Earth inhabitable for itself and all other species. It is why I view human intelligence as the defining oxymoron. It exists, but it is a rare commodity (along with human humility), and it is quite precious when it is found.

Back to the song I heard when there were more birds flying in the skies above us, when there were less signs of human destruction, when there was more hope that we were on the right path.

I heard this song when I was 19, trying to find my way to my authentic human self, of my way to freedom, while listening to a song written and sung by a band called Eagles, whom I also saw live in concert. There was a lot of discussion then on what is the song’s meaning, its essential meaning.

It is, I believe, for all intents and purposes, about freedom, breaking free from our human-made prisons, our ideas of violence and of dominance and destruction of our Earth. To live in peace and harmony with the Earth and with ourselves. The birds understand this so well. I hope to, one day, understand it, as well as my avian friends. As well as Arya the Cockatiel.

I will end this short essay with this final thought. Birds have much to teach us humans. It is best that we listen. Carefully & Quietly. Maybe then we can take wing and fly, fly high to the sky, if only figuratively.

Merci et à bientôt

Born at 315 ppm

Now at 425 ppm