41 pages • 1 hour read
Amy TanThe Backyard Bird Chronicles
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Art of Paying Attention
In the Preface, Tan writes that the journey that led to The Backyard Bird Chronicles included enrolling in a class on nature drawing and journaling, and meeting a 13-year-old named Fiona who showed her how to see with a sense of wonder: “Her curiosity and exuberance over so many things brought me back to that time in my childhood when I crouched and touched plants and animals, when I turned things over to see what was underneath, when I happily spent hours lost in curiosity and exploration, and was never satiated” (xix). Fiona helped Tan, who was then in her sixties, to reconnect with a way of seeing that had previously belonged only to Tan’s childhood.
Tan’s collection of journal entries reveals an evolution of her skill as an observer. In this process, drawing and understanding are intrinsically connected. As she grows in her knowledge of birds, her drawings become more detailed and accurate. As she practices “pencil miles,” she notices more and becomes more finely tuned to the intricate details of her study subjects. The opening illustration, a hummingbird feeding from a Lilliputian feeder from her hand, lacks the details of many of her later drawings. It also emphasizes her over the bird in its natural habitat. When Tan grows as an artist and birder, she elevates the context of the birds’ experiences.
As part of this elevation, Tan must learn to confront the reality of what she sees: the dark and light moments that punctuate the natural world. While she discovers many sights that bring her joy, such as baby quail scurrying as though on miniature roller blades, she also observes ugliness, death, fighting, and dominance. She begins to recognize that both are important to witness for understanding the experiences of animals fully and for contributing to a greater plane of meaning. The more she allows her knowledge of birds to grow in depth and scope, the more she realizes that she, too, is being observed by the birds.
John Muir Laws, or Jack, teaches Tan about intentional curiosity—treating curiosity like a meditative practice. As Tan internalizes this approach, she increases the number of feeders and ways of observing birds in her yard. She designs experiments and develops elaborate color-coding systems to distinguish individual juncos. For her, paying attention requires high levels of intention. For example, hummingbird nests are extremely small and hard to spot. Tan is desperate to see an Anna’s hummingbird nest, so she does everything she can to make her yard more inviting for the species and learns where to look to find birds’ nests. By applying intention to her attention, she increases the likelihood that she will learn.
Inquiry as a Path to Understanding
Accompanying the drawings in Tan’s journals are her handwritten observations of the birds in her backyard. While her quick sketches are sometimes cartoonish, depicting the birds interacting with one another and their environment, her journal entries rely on critical reflection. Often, Tan pauses in her recording to ask questions about the behaviors of her avian friends. These questions lead to others, spiraling into a poetic loop. When watching a house finch and goldfinch fight over food, Tan wonders: “What are the other aggressive traits I am not aware of? Do they raise feathers slightly, like a hissing cat? Do they have an equivalent to a frown? Do they exhibit tension that only a bird recognizes?” (26). Rapid fire questions like these appear throughout the work as Tan grapples with the behaviors and experiences of the birds she observes. These questions lead the writer to new ideas and ways of observing. Her questioning causes her to change up feed and feeders, to experiment with new ways of watching and playing with bird behavior, and to see connections in everything.
Tan learned early in her course with John Muir Laws to embrace intentional curiosity and to set aside her own perception. This is something that she grapples with throughout the text. As she asks questions about the birds she observes, her inquiries often diverge into thinking about human behaviors and emotions. She wonders whether birds feel the way humans feel. For example, after watching a crow get stuck on a branch and then fall foolishly, Tan wonders if birds can feel embarrassment. This question reveals Tan’s need to equate the experiences of birds with her own life.
Although this kind of anthropomorphizing is frowned on in scientific writing, Tan maintains that this approach is a meaningful one. Because she is a fiction writer, she is unwilling to completely abandon her love of mysticism. When a friend dies, she is comforted to imagine that a new species in her yard might somehow be a message. Blurring the lines between science and art allows her to think about her avian friends in new ways and to discover new patterns and meaning.
This interdisciplinary approach reflects ecological movements led by contemporary naturalists and educators. Although many of Tan’s questions go unanswered, she emphasizes the importance of asking over determining a response. This also mirrors what she learned from Laws about positioning the process of learning and the “pencil miles” over the perfection of a final product. Tan does not mind that she does not have answers to all her questions, nor does it bother her that she tends to think about birds through a human lens.
Embodiment as Creative Practice
As a writer, Tan was familiar with what it meant to embody the experiences of her characters. She describes her practice of writing as living inside a character’s head and allowing his or her choices to guide the narrative. Tan is skilled at practicing this brand of radical empathy and making sense of human behavior. However, it is a new experience for her to apply this skill to animals. Until John Muir Laws introduced her to the concept in the nature journaling class she enrolled in at age 63, she had never tried to get inside an animal’s mind and wonder about its experiences:
Among the many things I learned from Jack, and probably the most important to me, is this: ‘As you look at the bird, try to feel the life within it.’ For me that meant ‘Be the bird.’ That came naturally to me as a fiction writer. To feel the life of the story, I always imagine I am the character I am creating (xvi-xvii).
Tan exhibits evidence of this practice throughout the book. As she uses inquiry to gain a deeper understanding of birding behavior, she frequently designs questions that cause her to think about the emotional, spiritual, and relational lives of birds. She notes when hummingbirds and juncos are more affectionate toward one another, and she questions whether adult crows grooming fledglings is an act of instinct or an act of love. She reminds herself that humans exhibit love in exactly the same way, by showing care for one another. A study of distinguishing characteristics in juncos causes Tan to compare her inability to tell the birds apart to racism; she wonders how people can be blind to the nuances in the appearances of those who are unlike them.
Tan’s journals are a testament to the effectiveness of the practice of embodiment. As she places herself in the position of the birds, she becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them on the page. However, this radical empathy is not always easy. Throughout the text, the writer encounters sick and injured birds that affect her deeply. The death of a pine siskin becomes a perpetual reminder of tragedy in nature. An injured Cooper’s hawk fills Tan with grief. The writer recognizes that embodiment requires taking on all parts of the experience, good and bad. Just as humans face both joy and sadness, Tan determines that birds lead complex and meaningful lives.
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By Amy Tan
