The bird outside my second floor window looked wrong, somehow. It was, more or less, the shape and color of the red-headed woodpeckers I commonly saw around the neighborhood, but it was easily twice the size it should have been — a crow in woodpecker clothing. It occurred to me that it could be the Andre the Giant of birds, but then I pulled out my phone and googled “woodpecker the size of” and the internet autofilled “crow.” Clearly whatever I was seeing was not a genetic accident, but simply a type of bird I was unfamiliar with; in this case, it was a pileated woodpecker, and it was magnificent.
For the first time, I understood why people would wade through swamps to get a glimpse of the elusive, probably extinct, ivory-billed woodpecker (the pileated version is its much more common, and slightly smaller, cousin) — it is not simply the attempt to see something exceedingly rare; a bird this size, shape and color is, in and of itself, a wonder to behold.
There is an alternate timeline version of my life where I got very into birding. During the pandemic, when we were all casting around for new, socially isolated ways to fill the time, birding exploded, and I dipped my toe in the water. I downloaded a birding app and spent some time looking at lists of common and uncommon birds in my area. But even in the muddled headspace of lockdowns, I was self-aware enough to realize that, given my nature and the lack of other distractions, if I went down this path, the hobby could quickly slide into an obsession.
I also knew that I did not really possess the patience — or eye for detail — to do it well. I have always been good enough at noticing basic details and had a (very) general base of bird knowledge — that red bird is a cardinal; that blue one a blue jay; that tiny one flitting around the bushes is some kind of hummingbird — but true birders spot minute differences in species and can tell a song sparrow from a field sparrow from a swamp sparrow, whereas my bird spotting has always been more along the lines of “that large bird is some kind of hawk.”
The world can become so familiar we no longer actually see it. … But occasionally we encounter something that demands to be noticed.
I told myself that I wasn’t going to get into birding because doing so would mean spending even more time on my phone, trying to identify calls and colors, and I certainly didn’t need any excuses to be more online. But in truth there was (and is) a part of me that just doesn’t like owning my shortcomings, and I did not want to admit that I do not look closely enough, am not fully alert to subtlety, do not possess a refined enough eye. As a literary scholar, where close attention to detail and nuance is a key part of the work, I didn’t want to dive into a hobby where I would be found wanting in these areas.
But I did — and do — get the appeal, in part because of my affinity for literature. I love books and essays about people paying intensely close attention to birds — Helen Macdonald’s “H is for Hawk,” T. H. White’s “The Goshawk,” Brian Doyle’s “Joyas Voladoras.” Jonathan Meiburg’s “A Most Remarkable Creature”, about caracaras (a type of bird I had never heard of before), was one of my favorite reads of 2022. Each of these authors takes the time to look deeply at a particular bird and comes away with insight not just about that animal, but about the whole world.
The first author who comes to my mind when I think of this link between a particular bird and what it signifies is Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor is best known for her deeply Catholic, and deeply violent, short stories, but in popular iconography of her and her work, the peacock is practically indispensable. In part, this is because the only personal essay she ever published was about her peacocks.
Originally published in Holiday Magazine in 1961 as “Living with a Peacock,” and then republished as the first essay in “Mystery and Manners,” under the title “King of the Birds,” the essay is a mostly humorous account of her lifelong fascination with birds of all kinds, and the particular appeal of the peacock. She notes that “many people … are congenitally unable to appreciate the sight of a peacock,” but they have always been a source of wonder for her; from the moment she set eyes on her first peafowl, “I have been looking at them … always with the same awe as on that first occasion.”
The ability to see the peacock’s beauty plays a key role in her story “The Displaced Person,” where the birds are a symbol of God’s (often unnoticed) presence. The story is about a family of Polish war refugees coming to work on a Southern farm (which is very clearly based on O’Connor’s home of Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia) and how their presence upends the established Southern order, with disastrous consequences for all involved. Throughout the story the peacocks wander the grounds, where they are mostly an annoyance to the farmworkers. It is only the Catholic priest, Fr. Flynn, who cannot get enough of their beauty. When the male peacock finally unfurls his glorious tail in front of Fr. Flynn, O’Connor describes it as “tiers of small pregnant suns float[ing] in a green-gold haze over his head”; the priest responds by declaring, “Christ will come like that!”
The priest’s attention is contrasted with Mrs. Shortley, the wife of the farm’s dairyman, who fears and resents the arrival of the outsiders. O’Connor describes her as oblivious to the peacock, even when presented directly with its glorious tail: “her unseeing eyes [were] directly in front of the peacock’s tail. He had jumped into the tree and his tail hung in front of her, full of fierce planets with eyes that were each ringed and green. … She might have been looking at a map of the universe but she didn’t notice it any more than she did the spots of sky that cracked the dull green of the tree. She was having an inner vision instead.”
For O’Connor, this kind of inward facing vision, which is blind to the wonders of reality all around us, indicates one’s blindness to God’s presence, mercy and grace. O’Connor wants us to be alert to both the physical and the metaphysical. The natural world can be a sign that points us to a deeper reality, but it can also be enough, in and of itself, to be awake to the wonders of existence that we might otherwise be missing. In either case, we need to keep our eyes open and be willing to actually perceive what is in front of us.
The world can become so familiar we no longer actually see it. Nothing surprises us because we move through the world and take in only what we are expecting to see. But occasionally we encounter something that demands to be noticed. The peacock is not subtle, and neither is the pileated woodpecker. Anyone who sees these birds and is not stopped short by them, not astounded with delight, confuses me. But these extreme examples remind us to be alert to the more subtle ones as well.
It is our attention, not our perfection, that truly matters.
Admittedly, this is not always easy to do! It is spring, and the woods and pond near my house are ringing with the cacophony of newly returning birds; some are easy to identify — the red-wing blackbirds are particularly hard to miss — but I still can’t tell one brownish bird from another, particularly at a distance. But I am ready to try.
In my professional life, I have been able to best refine my vision for analyzing texts when reading them in community, either as a student or as a teacher, and I assume it is similar with birds (as with so many other things) — we need to work with others, be receptive to their perspective and expertise, and build networks of support. We can always improve our ability to see and understand, if we are willing to acknowledge our limitations and work to correct them.
I’ve been scanning the treetops lately and looking for flashes of color in the bushes. I am trying to be receptive to movements I would have otherwise missed. I know I will not catch it all, but it is our attention, not our perfection, that truly matters.
Top photo by Jatin Sindhu