I recently read a tirade by yet another person complaining
that conservationists and environmentalists prefer animals to human beings. I
find this endlessly frustrating because what made me love birds in the first
place was my connection to beloved people who loved birds. My grandmother died
when I was very little. My only personal recollection of her is climbing into the bed with her after her double radical mastectomy. She couldn’t lift her arms to hug me, and
asked me to lift them for her. Her warm touch infused me with love. She was
named Laura too, and my aunts and uncles told me throughout my childhood how much she loved
birds. After she died, whenever I saw a bird winging through the sky, I felt a
warm glow as if it were a messenger from heaven, carrying my love to my
grandmother, and her love back to me.
My Grandpa told me that when he was a young man, he read a
newspaper story about the death of the last Passenger Pigeon. He said
extinction was the saddest thing on earth, marking the end of one of God’s
creatures forever and ever. Now when I think of the story of Noah’s Ark, I remember
my Grandpa. The God of the Bible, who took notice of the fall of a sparrow, was
quite specific in his command to Noah to to save every species.
Strands of love for my Grandpa are especially woven into my
love for warblers. He had pet canaries, and told me stories about miners who
brought canaries down into the mines. If a canary died, the men knew they had
to get out in a hurry before undetectable poisonous gases killed them. The first
time I saw a flock of warblers, as tiny as canaries but bearing glowingly vivid
plumage, I thought they must be the angels of those canaries who had died to
save human beings. Long after I discovered what warblers really were, seeing them
in brilliant spring plumage still makes me feel as happy and safe and warm as
that little girl snuggled in her grandpa’s lap imagining angel birds.
My grandmother died before I turned 2, and we saw my Grandpa
only once or twice a year. My home was dysfunctional, chaotic, and violent, and
many children in our neighborhood weren’t allowed to play with us. But at
bedtime, I’d listen to House Sparrows cheeping excitedly from bushes along the
house. They seemed to be telling one another stories about their day’s
adventures as they said goodnight. No one ever kissed me goodnight or tucked me
in, but I imagined belonging to a sparrow family—that made me feel less lonely
and excluded. On the first day of first grade, a sweet young priest named
Father Ciemega came into our classroom. When he asked if anyone could recite
the alphabet, I lurched up, waving my hand in a most Hermione Granger-like way.
He called on me, and after I reached ‘xyz’, he handed me a holy card depicting
God’s hand gently cradling some baby sparrows. That seemed like a special
message just for me.
(not the same holy card as I received)
I can’t speak for all environmentalists, but my love for
birds is fundamentally rooted in these deeply personal, human experiences. Close
encounters of the bird kind don’t just gratify the human mind—our experiences
with birds have the power to touch our hearts and stir our very souls.
In coming weeks, I’ll focus some blog posts and "For the Birds" programs on deeply
spiritual, soul-enriching experiences I’ve had with special birds.