The Wonder of Wings

Cultivating Presence While Watching the Birds

If you are a regular or if you have landed on Tarantula: Authors and Art welcome. This year, we hope that our stories and the artists that we present will inspire you to start your own creative journey, and our house team of writers will join you on this ride. This January our inspiration is Dutch artist Eva de Visser. Our contributor, Karen Grace, an art teacher, historian, and resident bird lover will take you on a little walk in the park - we hope you’ll give it a try. If a friend forwarded you this article, welcome; if you like it, share it or why not subscribe?

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If I am rushing, and I frequently am, there are so many things I miss.  This morning, for instance, I dashed out the door intent only on arriving intact at the right place at the right time.  Looking down at the sidewalk or at the traffic around me, I paid far more attention to the gravel and the frozen ground underfoot than the skies above.  Admittedly they were gray, but still, I paid them no mind.  Modern life mostly encourages this attitude: keep moving, don’t dally, be efficient, and let’s be honest here, keep your phone in your hand so you can always be accomplishing something.

Eva de Visser, Boeket 1

Thankfully something made me pause, a sweet little trill of notes, so I looked up, which made me take a deep breath, and then look around to see where it was coming from.  All of a sudden, my experience of the morning was completely different.  I smiled, my shoulders moved down from my ears, and I had a new feeling of energy.  A tiny shift with an enormous effect!

Living in the city (or anywhere really) it is totally possible to walk a couple kilometers, even through a park, and not notice a single bird.  Not even a pigeon.  And yet, they’re out there. Little jewels that defy gravity and float through the air.  Nothing short of magic incarnate. 

When I slow down and walk through the world in a more present way, I find I spot them everywhere… it’s almost like a superpower. I spy blackbirds singing at the top of their lungs from iron fence posts, sweet little chickadee types flitting through the branches, sturdy fieldfares kicking up the dust on the ground, and big brash magpies darting about, skillfully scoping out their next treasures.  Once you start noticing it’s hard to stop. 

Eva de Visser, Bron 2

These beautiful paintings that we get to enjoy this month from Eva de Visser could be seen as a fantasy or even as a dream, but to my mind, they represent a kind of heightened reality- a sense of what is possible if we only slow down and open our eyes.  Birdwatching is almost its own form of mindfulness - when I’m looking for birds my breath slows, my field of vision expands, and I pay attention to the world and my place in it in a completely different way. 

I’m not the only one of course. Zen masters, poets, artists, and ordinary humans for centuries have watched with wonder at these little gems.  Take for instance this haiku from one of the masters of the Japanese art form:

from this bird
the year’s first song
rises

-Issa

Ah yes, and their songs! What powerful and varied voices in such tiny little packages.  Why do they sing?  To communicate with each other of course, to attract a mate, to proclaim their ownership of territory, to raise alarm at a threat.  And yet sometimes they seem to be singing for the joy of just singing! 

Eva de Visser, Rare Flowers

I have been in love with birds for almost as long as I can remember. One spring when I was little there was a robin’s nest under my father’s office window, and I loved watching those beautiful blue eggs to see what was going to happen next. When hungry, noisy, babies hatched, I was aware that I had witnessed something incredible. 

So, I am always happy to pause a moment or take a little detour to seek out my feathered friends.  On an ordinary afternoon walk through one tiny church yard, next to one of the busiest streets in Stockholm, I find not one but three flocks of birds flitting about: tiny tits hover in one corner of shrubbery, the sparrows are camped out in a taller bush near the center of things all puffed up in the chill air, and the fieldfares case their turf in the corner under the big chestnut tree.  It may be cold out and you might think they would all migrate to someplace warmer, but there’s plenty of birds still around.  Birdwatching in winter also has certain advantages - there aren’t any leaves on the trees to hide in and so it makes them easier to spot. 

Eva de Visser, Boeket 2

Here I offer you an invitation:  step outside, look up, and listen.  Step away from your to-do list for a moment, stop in your tracks, turn back, and steal a glance around… what little spirits might be floating through?  Just a two-minute pause somewhere quiet near a tree or a bush will do nicely. You might need to wait a moment, you might need to stand perfectly still. Birds rarely appear on command, but they are nearly always close by.  You don’t need to know their names or the notes of their song - just notice…  and then see how it makes you feel.  It is only a little detour I promise, and you might come away with a new song in your heart.  Do you see them first or hear them?  Can you find them easily or must you hunt?  What little message might this bird have for you today? What song are they singing to your soul?

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

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