The joy of birdsong
I’ve been thinking about presence a lot lately. I mean, how could I not, perched in a hanging chair on my family’s patio, managing my energy for the day? It’s this societal trope, reiterated almost ad nauseam, that we are supposed to live in the moment. And as with all things that are being said too much in passing, we hardly ever stop to wonder what the heck that actually means.
The photograph you see above was taken in early 2012, by me. It was a lucky shot and to my knowledge, I had never before taken a picture of a bird while it was singing. In fact, I hadn’t taken many pictures of birds to begin with, except of a few napping seagulls on our family trip to the Northern Sea once. Up until later in life, I wasn’t very interested in nature. I mean, I was interested in nature because I loved beautiful landscapes and something drew me to secluded, cave-like, serene, mysterious spots outdoors sometimes. But dandelion was about the only plant I could identify on a meadow and in terms of birds, it was crows, blackbirds, pigeons and, yeah, seagulls. (I’d like to point out that there are approximately fifty different species of seagulls. I bet you didn’t know that. I didn’t either until, like, two minutes ago.)
The picture above shows a robin and as I know now, they are one of the easier shots when you try to get a bird on film while singing. What strikes me about this image today are two things. Number one, it was taken in Kew Gardens, London, a place I’d really like to see again. (I didn’t live far from there in 2013.) Number two, I remember the scene as I took the photo - in a green house with my family, as we wandered around - but I don’t remember the bird song at all. Knowing a thing or two about the brain, I’m assuming that I can’t remember something that I couldn’t categorize back then. Bird song is bird song, right?
Well. Welcome to 2025, the year where I finally realized that not only are there fifty species of seagulls in the world, there are also at least fifty different species of birds around you all the time if you know what to look for - acoustically or visually. If you commute between a place you live and a place you work at and you talk occasional walks through a park or a forest, you will, like me, end up encountering dozens and dozens of different birds. I know because I have proof in my app (I use Merlin Bird ID, it’s free), which conveniently shows me which bird is singing at the moment, as long as there’s not too much noise.
To be fair, my birding journey already started a year ago when I downloaded the app. With my mother being a hobby ornothologist, I guess it was ultimately a matter of time and I’ve now been known to stop in my tracks and listen intently or stare into the foliage of nearby trees to figure out who’s singing or complaining and why. My life list of all birds I have encountered so far include pearls like the chiffchaff, the short-toed treecreeper and the cutest bird of all time, the long-tailed tit. I swear I’m not making this up.
As of today, I’m fairly confident in pointing out about ten to twenty different species by either look or song (don’t test me on the calls though) and I burst into childish delight when some of them come to the feeder in front of my family’s kitchen window. Not only is it adorable to watch sparrows and great tits (chrm) peck at grains and make a mess, I also feel closer to all of this because I now know them by name and recognize at least a little bit of their behavior.
So when my mum and I were in the car today, a little disappointed still that we couldn’t make out what that one bird had been we had just heard, I pointed out that it’s really odd how little most people, including my past self, know about birds because they are everywhere. And not just visually, like insects or ‘weeds’, as we snarkily call all the plants we don’t want or understand, but acoustically. Bird songs, especially in spring and summer, are actually pretty hard to miss, but because we can’t tell them apart, they become background noise. Beautiful background noise for the most part (although a broken-record pigeon or an upset magpie are … a little hard on the ears), but background noise nonetheless.
And this is where I return to my initial statement about being in the moment, because our thinking brain, commonly referred to as the consciousness, does exactly this. It turns everything into background noise as long as we’re able to run on auto-pilot (which is actually most of the time, luckily, life would be too exhausting otherwise), only to focus instead on rumination, speculation and planning. In short, we are dissociated from the present moment to a certain extent for a large portion of our lives. Ever driven your car someplace familiar and thought about something else while driving? Trailed off during a conversation with a friend? That’s everyday-life dissociation. It’s also one of the reasons why we believe that the years go by faster and faster as we age - the more routine or familiar experiences we have, the more we can run on auto-pilot and the less aware we are of time passing (amongst other factors obviously).
As common as dissociation is (not just in trauma, which would be a different post) and as useful as it can be to manage energy/engagement and to collect our thoughts from time to time, we have also collectively come to realize that when we spend too much time ‘in our heads’ instead of ‘in the moment’, we tend to be more anxious about the future or resentful about the past and we simply don’t experience life as intensely as we could. In other words, we tend to feel the most alive when we are fully present in the situation that we’re in. And how do we do that? By turning background noise into meaningful language.
Having a very active thinking brain, I’ve been on a mindfulness journey for a few years. I’ve tried different forms of meditation (not all of them are designed to ground you in your surroundings, some actually do the opposite) and, through cooking, time spent outdoors and little sensory experiments, slowly started to immerse myself more. A shower on the coldest setting does wonders to quiet the mind, as does the scent of fresh herbs while chopping.
When birding came around, it took things to a whole new level, though. Because, again, birds are actually everywhere. So any time I was outside or close to a window, I could listen and observe. And before I knew it, my senses would reliably alert me to songs both familiar and new whenever I went out. It’s like when you recognize different types of vehicles by their sounds - but about one thousand percent more wholesome. Unlike car sounds, the birds will tell you where the cats are (magpies are very vocal about that), whether there’s rain coming or that the sun is setting. They will sit on roof tops or in bushes or fly high above your head. Their presence will tell you about vegetation, season or pollution. It’s like your awareness of your surroundings is expanding all of a sudden - where before there was chaotic and seemingly boring input, now there is meaning and definition. I’m more aware of where I am because I can read my surroundings better.
And the beautiful thing about this is that it doesn’t require any additional thinking. You don’t even have to know if it’s actually a blackcap you’re hearing or a garden warbler. Being in the moment, I find, is not just about being aware of your sensory input rather than your circling thoughts. It’s also very much the ability to simply enjoy what’s around you. And no matter where you are in life or what you’re dealing with, there is an inexplicable joy in opening your window on a late June day around sunset and hearing a blackbird sing somewhere in the distance. I’m actually hearing one right now as I’m writing this. We are so used to run around in our internal factory of thoughts big and small that we forget this simple truth - there is nothing, and I mean, nothing except the here and now. There is absolutely no harm in putting our thoughts aside for a while and just listen.
May this beautiful bird song remind us of that every day.