Birds of Childhood <3
Nostalgic songs and calls
Standing outside yesterday evening in Detroit, I was on the phone with my mom and she asked me, ‘are those birds??’ I realized it must have been loud enough through the phone that in NYC it would sound like a full bird sanctuary or circus. Surrounded by trees and brush, and unable to see them anywhere, I was nestled in this safe cocoon of sound, of the early night calls of our feathered neighbors.
After I hung up the phone I stood there for a long while, taking it in and listening to all the different voices. I opened the trusty Merlin Bird ID app and recorded their calls. American Robin, Northern Cardinal, Chimney Swift. I love using the app, seeing the soft charcoal lines of their voices, watching their pictures light up when it’s their turn to speak. It always feels somehow like having a conversation with them.
This morning as I write this, I hear different birds outside my window, with different voices and calls from last night’s friends. They are different from the bird calls I heard in Michigan when I was little too. I’m always transported directly back to childhood when I hear a Mourning Dove call. It’s both sweetly comforting and also sad like a pang to the heart, almost too much to bare.
Along with the sound of the Mourning Dove, the bird that reminds me most of childhood is probably the Seagull. While not necessarily a backyard bird, seagulls in lakeside Michigan were always a frequent friend to see. The memories I have attached with seagulls are so precious to me like sacred treasures, almost too much to think about, and so amazed to have them as well.
Are there birds that remind you of childhood or precious memories? Is it seeing the bird, hearing their calls and songs, or both? Please share your memories and thoughts of birds and their voices.
I hope you’re having a great weekend. Please share any thoughts about birds, and I’ll see you in the Chat to share your photos if you have any. Happy Saturday, everyone.
How wonderful this is. After we hung up I was also thinking of the birds of your childhood. The call of the doves early in the morning has always been my favorite. Both melancholy and joyful.
Thank you so much for this wonderful post, Jesse. I love the Merlin App as well, identifying birds both by photograph and by sound. Your childhood memory of birds reminds me so much of mine. They were always friends, comforting in the beauty and constancy of their song.
I wanted to share this poem, “To a Skylark,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in which the poet celebrates the birdsong, questions what it is and where it comes from, how it awakens us to things we would not otherwise hear or know or understand, and acknowledges how inferior even the poet is beside the bird.
I love the end when the poet says: “Teach me half the gladness/ That thy brain must know,/ Such harmonious madness/ From my lips would flow/The world should listen then, as I am listening now.”
TO A SKYLARK
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad day-light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aëreal hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
Like a rose embower'd
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus Hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.