I’ve always enjoyed birds. Magpies, crows, blue jays, hawks, blackbirds, and chickadees were among some of the many feathered creatures that filled my younger days with their callous or chirping calls.
Now, I’m paying more attention to the birds around me, fieldbook in hand, binoculars or camera in the other. Names surround me, some sticking, others frustratingly leaving my mind at the precise time I need them. Goldeneye, dark-eyed junco, stellar jay, osprey, nighthawk, flycatcher, tree swallow, grebe, pileated woodpecker, brown creeper, catbird, red-winged blackbird, rufous hummingbird. The need to name – to place each individual bird in its own labelled box – comes from a place that yearns to know, to classify, to see through the naturalist’s eyes.
After reading William Fiennes’ The Snow Geese and Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights, I began to look at birds a bit differently. They no longer seemed part of the background, but instead came to the front stage, where they’ve been featured more and more in my photography.
In The Snow Geese, Fiennes writes about the inner influence of Zugunruhe on birds. Zugunruhe, first expressed by ornithologist Johann Andreas Naumann in the nineteenth century, is the migratory instinctual agitation a bird experiences. Fiennes writes, “Circannual rhythms control the onset of Zugunruhe; restlessness prompts the bird to depart [in migration]… Both the need to migrate and the route to be taken are at least partially coded in the genes. Caged birds not only get restless, they get restless in a particular direction.”
He goes on to write that garden warblers migrate from Spain and Morocco to Germany and Africa, flying first southwest, then south and southeast. Captive garden warblers display restlessness as the rest of their wild kind begin migration. The birds hop southwest in their cages towards France and Spain; then south and southeast, as the free warblers are migrating over the Strait of Gibraltar. “They seem to act out the entire course of the migration in the confinement of their cages,” writes Fiennes.
I found this fascinating. Never had I heard of Zugunruhe before, and yet it’s a vital part of birds’ migration. It’s their internal instinct, the compass imbued under layers of feathers, skin, flesh, that points toward their destination. It’s a way of knowing without thinking; just like for people, that part of ourselves that points our own compasses without logical thought.
Though birds are everywhere, we tend to blot them into the background, lending a glance here and there. But to appreciate them is to honour the interconnected instincts in all of us, and nature’s handiwork herself. Let yourself be winged like the bird, and don’t hesitate to listen to your internal compass. Find your own migration, your own Zugunruhe.
Here’s a collection of recent photos acknowledging our feathered neighbours.
Wow, your writing style is really impressive!
Thanks so much, Maeve! :)
Love that photo of the female junco perching on a branch! And this is a great post Hazel.
Thanks Mom! <3
Thank you for introducing me to the term “zugunruhe”. This triggers a memory of research done at the University of Alberta (if memory serves me well), where migratory birds in captivity, where exposed to artificial light to simulate that the days were getting shorter, before the actual natural lighting shift. The shift in lighting did trigger the birds to head south before their normal migration timing.
Now research is linking artificial light emanating from large cities affects bird migration. One research paper: ” ‘Buildings all across North America, all across the world, are killing birds, and those add up,’ says Doug Stotz, a senior conservation ecologist at the Field Museum. ‘What we’ve learned in the past 20 years about lights being on has caused the city of Chicago to create its Lights Out program, which requires buildings’ external lights to be turned off during peak migration.
‘I hope this paper will show why it’s important to turn off internal lighting as well, especially in Chicago, which is the country’s deadliest city for migrating birds.’ ”
Light pollution was another issue for birds mentioned in Helen Macdondald’s latest book. It is certainly something affecting migratory birds’ populations. I hope that people can realize that impact and gear towards a future that is less artificial and confusing for our feathered friends.