As I raised the window shade on a dreary, gray morning, filled with despair for a world at war and the seemingly never-ending winter, a flock of wild geese flew overhead directly in front of me, lifting my spirits on their wings. Their flight evoked lines from both Wendell Berry’s and Mary Oliver’s poems in conversation with each other.[i]
When despair for the world grows in me. . .
Tell me about your despair . . .
I come into the peace of wild things . . .
. . . the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home. . .
I rest in the grace of the world.
Wild geese. What is it about their flight that is so riveting? One cannot help but look up when hearing the approach of their wings, of their calls to each other. It is a magnificent sight, these free wild creatures working in such harmony and community, collectively guiding each other, easing each other’s way, individual yet collective -- each instinctively knowing the way home, each knowing it is best to travel together.
Murmuration of starlings
A sign of spring, the geese traveling north foretell of warmer days to come. Living by northern waters, they, and the return of seagulls and the loud, cawing murders of crows, not the robin, are my first signs of spring. I first learned of the term, “murder of crows” when I moved north. The murders seem much more prevalent here than they were where I grew up in Ohio. Recently, when reading Katherine May’s Wintering, I was introduced to another avian expression -- “murmuration” -- the way starlings fly in hordes, quickly changing direction, creating undulating bird clouds in the sky. I immediately fell in love with the word.
This sent me in search of what other groups of birds might be called, beyond the obvious “flock.” I was rather stunned by the variety of names. A group of crows is known not only as “murder,” but also as “congress,” “horde,” and “cauldron.” In fact, all birds of prey – hawks, vultures, ravens, eagles also gather in “cauldrons” and “kettles.” Given the association with “murder,” “cauldrons,” and “kettles,” I thought perhaps crows had been linked with medieval misogynistic depictions of malevolent witches gathering around cauldrons, casting evil spells. But no, the “kettle” and “cauldron” refer to the shapes of the flock, and the term “murder” comes from the fact that crows so often show up around dead bodies. We’re lucky that they do. Imagine our roadways without the crow road cleaning crews.
Other birds have more stately gatherings – the “court” of kingbirds; the “parliament” of owls; the “committee” of vultures. Others are quite pious – the “omniscience” and “prayer” of godwits; the “congregation” of plovers; the “convocation” of eagles; and the “conclave,” “radiance,” and “vatican” of cardinals. Some water birds have nautical names – a “flotilla” of gulls, a “regatta” of swans; others not – a “sord” of mallards, a “gaggle,” “skein,” or “plump” of geese, a “sedge” of cranes. Loons, as one might expect, are to be found in “asylums.” Some blue jays group together in “scolds” while others “party,” perhaps inviting the “drummings” of woodpeckers. Sapsuckers “slurp” together while sparrows amass in “quarrels,” buzzards in “wakes,” wrens in “herds,” warblers in “confusions,” while parrots cluster in sheer “pandemonium.” Black-capped chickadees, with their Zorro-like masks, travel together in “banditries,” while the wild turkeys round up in “posses” in pursuit.
Most delightful of all are the “tremblings” and “shimmerings” of “charms” of hummingbirds, goldfinches, and redpolls. Indeed, the last have been charming me all winter with their flashes of rosy red against the snow and their flutterings around the feeder
We’ve had other feathered friends this winter – the ever-faithful chickadees, the occasional nuthatch and red-bellied woodpecker (oddly named, since its head, not its belly, is red). The pileated woodpecker awes us with its presence from time to time. Rarer and more precious still is the daytime visit of the barred owl that lives somewhere between our neighbors’ house and ours. They are such magical creatures. According to certain eco-spiritual beliefs, the visit from an owl signifies wisdom, tranquility, protection, transition – perhaps a visitor from beyond the veil. It is also a symbol of death and rebirth, and in those times when one despairs for the world, it arrives to show the way out.
“My inspiration was winged,” wrote Terry Tempest Williams in her When Women Were Birds (41). We need the guidance, inspiration, and mirth of birds in these times. In his Why Birds Sing, composer David Rothenberg underscored “the endless enthusiasm of singing birds,” even in the midst of war (quoted in Williams, 64). He wrote this in reference to the third movement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, entitled “Abîme des Oiseaux” (Abyss of Birds). Olivier Messiaen became a prisoner of war in a German stalag shortly after being drafted into the French army during World War II. Imprisoned with him were cellist Etienne Pasquier, clarinetist Henri Akoka, and violinist Jean La Boulaire. In the midst of those brutal conditions, his captivity the very opposite of the free flight of birds, Messiaen composed, and with the other three musicians, performed what many consider his finest work in 1941, while still in the stalag. Of the third movement he said, “The birds are the opposite of time. They represent our longing for light, for stars, for rainbows and for jubilant song’” (quoted in Williams, 65).
Such music we are gifted in what Kathleen Dean Moore has named the “dawn chorus” – those cheerful chirrups, whistles, and warbles that accompany our waking on spring and summer mornings. Moore asks, “Who knows why birds pour out their hearts first thing in the morning? . . . Maybe the morning, before the foraging gets good, is spare time that the birds fill with singing, . . . saying, ‘I am strong. I am fully alive. I have lived through the night and emerged full-throated from my dark shelter with energy and joy to spare.’ All good reasons to sing” (191-192). Williams adds to this that “Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” (205). [ii]
It is difficult to imagine a world without their song, but might we be headed toward a silent spring? During World War II, chemical companies created nerve agents for potential use in chemical warfare and insecticides to rid South Pacific jungles of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Needing to find new markets for these chemicals after the war, they quickly created new applications for them in industrial agriculture and in mosquito-free summers in the developing suburbia. Heralded as a wonder, their inherent dangers would soon reveal themselves. In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, her findings of the deadly effects of DDT on bird populations. It was a warning to us all of the mortal dangers of pesticides to birds and other creatures[iii] – a cautionary tale that if we did not change our ways, one spring morning we would awake not to birdsong, but to silence. In the sixty years since she wrote her book, the songbird population in the eastern US has declined by 75%. How lonely to live in a world without these feathered choristers.
In his Judgment of Birds, Loren Eiseley tells a story of how after a black bird had murdered a baby of a much smaller bird, smaller birds gathered. Then one began to sing, and then another, and another. “Suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful . . . They were the singers of life . . . “ (quoted in Williams, 200). Just as the lone voice of Rachel Carson began to sing, then another, and another, in actions to end the use of such deadly chemicals, we, too, can become singers of life.[iv]
The birds remind us to begin and end each day in song. And in those times -- when despair grows in us -- we need only look to the wild geese, who, as ornithologist Laura Erikson reminds us, have “the power . . . to draw our eyes skyward. As we watch, our hearts rise above earthbound cares, and for a moment we, too, take wing with the geese” (March 30), and rest in the grace of the world.
Sandhill Cranes, Crex Meadows, Wisconsin
Notes
Berry, Wendell. “The Peace of Wild Things.” In New Collected Poems. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
Erickson, Laura L. For the Birds: An Uncommon Guide. Duluth, MN: Pfeiffer-Hamilton, 1994.
May, Katherine. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.
Messiaen, Olivier, Quartet for the End of the World. Lexington, MA: Ongaku Records, 2004.
Moore, Kathleen Dean. Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World. Berkely, CA: Counterpoint, 2021.
Oliver, Mary. “Wild Geese.” In Dream Work. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986.
Quartet for the End of Time: A Prisoner of War Composition | Classical Music Indy
Steingraber, Sandra. Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment. Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1997.
Study shows dramatic songbird decline possibly linked to insecticide – RCI | English (rcinet.ca)
What is a Group of Birds Called? Your Will Be Surprised! (factslegend.org)
Williams, Terry Tempest. When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice. New York: Sarah Crichton Books.
i] Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”; Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
ii] Williams was referencing the script of Nushu, a secret script known only to otherwise illiterate women in the rural villages of Jiangyong in Hunan province of China, 1600-1100 BCE, who worshipped birds -- a script made of bird tracks, in which the symbol for bird’s head is the same as for a woman’s head, and women and birds were the same (156-7). Bird goddesses have been worshipped throughout the world. The Celtic Goddess Rhiannon was always accompanied by birds who could heal the soul. Marija Gimbutas discovered bird goddess statues throughout the peace-loving cultures of Old Europe. In Sumer, she was known as Lilith, and is depicted in Babylonian statues as a woman with wings and claw feet. In Egypt, Isis was often imaged as a woman with large feathered wings. When women were birds, the wisdom of birds as givers of life, protectors of the peace, and healers of the soul was honored. (I thank Judith Shaw for compiling some of this information on bird goddesses for the feminism and religion blog, The Bird Goddess by Judith Shaw (feminismandreligion.com), 2012.)
[iii] Carson, herself, would die of them, succumbing to breast cancer in her fifties.
[iv] Simple actions of refusing to purchase or use pesticides and herbicides, purchasing organic products, and supporting organic farms contribute to ending the use of the chemicals that are decimating bird populations. Organizations that support these efforts include the Audubon Society, https://www.audubon.org, the Jane Goodall Institute, https://www.janegoodall.org, and the Organic Farmers Association, https://organicfarmersassociation.org.