The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Tan grows in confidence and pride in her birding abilities. She begins to understand the cycles of birds more intimately and is attuned when something is out of the ordinary. When pine siskins arrive after fighting off disease, a red-tailed hawk appears in Tan’s yard, threatening the returned birds. Tan reminds herself to avoid rooting for one or the other. She designs new ways to observe birds more closely, such as building a small, caged feeder and placing it against a glass door so that she can crouch next to it and wait.

This section also shows evidence of the pandemic and other external contexts on Tan’s birding and interpretations of patterns. Wildfires send new species to her yard: a Western meadowlark, a black-headed grosbeak, and a hermit warbler—a species considered rare. Observing birds helps Tan to feel as though she is not cooped up. She gathers with friends on her verandah, each person ten feet away from the others. Together, they observe the birds moving around in Tan’s backyard. One of her friends can hear two woodpeckers knocking to one another, and it reminds Tan that she needs to invest in getting a hearing aid. She does not want to miss anything for loss of hearing.

Sounds play an important role in Tan’s development as a birder. She recognizes the cheerful song of the white-throated sparrow, which informs her about the mating and courtship habits of the birds. Sound also alerts Tan to a mother and son pair of great horned owls arriving to her yard and to a new mating pair that would later overtake the territory.

Tan never ceases to be surprised by birds. While watching a towhee attempt to get inside a caged feeder, she notices that it cannot fit its large frame through the holes. However, a white-throated sparrow, roughly the same size as the towhee, slides between the wires with ease to obtain a chunk of suet. The towhee watches the sparrow and, without flinching, makes itself smaller in the same way as the sparrow and fits between the bars. Tan wonders about birds observing others and learning from them.

The writer also continues to experience tragedy in nature. A spotted towhee loses a leg to a cat and dies. Another bird loses a leg and is unable to adapt for migration. A juvenile Cooper’s hawk, possibly impaired from household poison, crashes into her bird feeders. Tan drives the hawk to a wildlife center, where, after a few months, it is determined that the hawk’s condition is not viable. To Tan, this tragedy mirrors her own loss of a close friend named Asa who dies from a heart attack. Tan recalls how Asa used to dress in drag and mimic Tan. Two days after Asa’s death, Tan sees three rare species in her backyard: an American robin, a chipmunk, and a purple finch. She wonders if Asa is behind these unusual sightings.

Tan frequently applies human characteristics to birds. A study of a clumsy crow causes her to wonder whether birds can feel embarrassment. She recalls that monkeys in a zoo will repeat behaviors if they are being laughed at by spectators, as if to indicate they meant to make the original mistake. When male juncos suddenly become polite to females during an off-mating season, Tan wonders if there is more behind their affectionate behavior. Tan challenges her own anthropomorphizing of the birds in her yard but then argues that viewing birds in this way leads to new understanding: “But anthropomorphic paradigms are a start for looking at equivalents from a bird’s perspective. I parse out the traits of human emotions to see if any are found in the behavior of birds” (232). Tan is happy that she is an artist and not a pure scientist—that she can embrace a measure of mysticism in her practice.