The Backyard Bird Chronicles
- Jun 27, 2024
- 2 min read
★★★★★
I have been watching birds since I was a young boy sitting at my grandparents’ breakfast table on the south side of Indianapolis. The table sat in front of a sliding glass door and just beyond the concrete patio slab (before they built a screened porch) was a covered platform feeder that sat atop a four-by-four post. I loved the comings and goings, the taking of turns, the small acts of dominance, chasing off the incessant squirrels. Though I know many more birds came, I only recall the common ones: robins, cardinals, sparrows of indeterminate species, blue jays, and mourning doves (though they only ate what fell to the ground).
My interest was casual: It was more entertaining than morning television. But back at home in Tulsa, our table did not face a window so rather than birdwatching it was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe on TV. I’d never installed a bird feeder at any house until our present one. I don’t know why. Sure, some were less conducive to watching depending on the dining room’s location (if there was a dining room), but many were well suited to it. Now we have four—tube feeder, hopper feeder, peanut feeder, and sugar water feeder—and though we attract a great many birds, I think we can attract a wider variety and would like to do so. Despite the number of feeders and the multiple pairs of binoculars strategically placed in various rooms, I think my interest remains at the casual level, albeit perhaps at the upper level of casual. While I take pleasure in identifying birds during hikes (or just being out in the world generally), I don’t go “birding.” I’m not in a bird club or visit online birding forums or chatrooms, but I am a daily user of Merlin Bird ID from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and I do have quite a bit of bird content in my Instagram feed.
Well, Amy Tan went from casual birder to full-tilt obsessive, and she brings us on that journey in The Backyard Bird Chronicles with joy, innocence, delight, humor, curiosity, a keen eye, a writer’s knack for storytelling, and, perhaps most impressively, wonderful illustrations that bring it all to life. Tan didn’t set out to create a book. She was simply keeping journals to document her increasing obsession (her word) with birds. What began as simple, naïve observations of “ordinary” behaviors changed as she continued to watch day after day, year after year. Chronicles distills hundreds of pages from nine journals over five years into an absolute treasure of a book that is, yes, about birds, but is really a primer on how to pay attention, how to see, how to engage, and how to be present. Couldn’t we all use a bit more of that?
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