Wings and Words: A Field Guide to the Birds of North American Environmental Literature A Senior Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Environmental Studies major requirements at Skidmore College Jenna Gersie Class of 2010 Advised by: Michael Steven Marx, Associate Professor of English March 3, 2010 1 Table of Contents Preface……………………………………………………………………………………..2 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..3 Chapter One: Pigeons……………………………………………………………………..5 Chapter Two: Parakeets………………………………………………………………….21 Chapter Three: Hummingbirds…………………………………………………………..32 Chapter Four: Herons and Egrets………………………………………………………...41 Chapter Five: Geese……………………………………………………………………...61 Chapter Six: Owls and Nightjars………………………………………………………...75 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….89 Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………92 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………...98 2 Preface I would go to the bay in late morning, at low tide, the sun high in the sky, the air hot and still. Dozens of great white egrets would wade in the muddy sands, picking at crabs and small fish that the water left behind when it receded to the other shore. Little blue herons scattered when I came close, flying toward the water or walking, long-legged, under the dock to search for feed beneath the shadows. Large brown pelicans sat on the surface in the distance, silhouettes resting between shades of blue. My mornings were filled with birds. I admired them. They were so quiet, so dignified, so austere in their daily duties of wading, drinking, feeding in the Florida sunshine. I was alone with them there, along the shores of the bay. I looked only outward to the horizon, the sky, the steady blue of the still water at noon. Once, sitting on the dock, my feet hanging over the side, my gaze forward, I saw out of the corner of my eye a great blue heron as it landed to my left on the grassy shore. It stayed there, poised in silence for a brief moment, for an eternity. I did not move. It did not move. And then suddenly, and all too soon, it left me alone in my own quiet, and flew. 3 Introduction I grew up with a bird feeder in the backyard, a pair of binoculars on the coffee table, and field guides to birds on the bookshelves. Birdwatching was a passive hobby of my father’s, and though it never caught my interest when I was young, I always appreciated his love for the small, winged creatures that flew into our yard. After my father’s death, birds began to symbolize his life for me. His love for the Great Blue Heron, in particular, caused my family to attribute symbolism to the tall, elegant birds. For other friends, the Scarlet Tanager represented a walk in the woods with my father; a Bald Eagle brought to mind a canoe trip on the Delaware River. My own interest in birds has grown as I have developed this project. My attention to birds has not been aided by binoculars; rather, my birds have been observed through eyes focused on environmental literature. My original idea for this project came from reading texts such as Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, and A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold—all replete with sight and sound imagery describing birds. These texts sparked my interest, and I aimed to continue reading about birds, from historical, scientific, and literary perspectives. While grounded in environmental literature, this project also explores the historical and ecological factors affecting the livelihood of birds in North America. An eco-critical analysis of environmental literature investigates the connections among birds expressed in nature writing, the birds found in our natural world, and the humans who observe these birds. The concept for this project was originally modeled on Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of North America . The project is intended as a field guide to the birds of North American environmental literature. Each chapter presents a different bird 4 species or family of birds; the chapters can be read individually or continuously and contain descriptive information on the birds as well as a literary analysis of the texts that incorporate images of the birds. If readers have a specific interest in a particular bird, they can flip to that chapter to learn about that bird specifically. Or, they can read the text in its entirety to reflect on what birds, in general, represent for humans within environmental literature. Chapters One and Two describe the extinctions of the Passenger Pigeon and the Carolina Parakeet, respectively. Chapter Three details the colors and energy of hummingbirds. Chapter Four portrays the elusive and solitary nature of herons and egrets. Chapter Five describes the migrations of Canada geese, harbingers of the changing seasons. Chapter Six explains the mysterious and haunting qualities of owls and nightjars. After the Conclusion, an Appendix is included to provide more information on the literary sources used for this project. Through this project, I hope to allow readers to explore ideas of how humans relate to nature through experiences with birds. Readers should question what birds tell us about our natural environment, what they mean for ideals of conservation in our society, and what they represent in terms of human connections to the environment. I hope this project also encourages readers to wonder what place birds hold within environmental literature as well as what birds symbolize to humans and individuals on a personal level. 5 Pigeons Family Columbidae “Plump, fast-flying birds with small head and low, cooing voice; nod their head as they walk. Two types: (1) birds with fanlike tails and (2) smaller birds with rounded or pointed tail. Sexes mostly similar. Food: Seeds, waste grain, fruit, insects. Range: Nearly worldwide in tropical and temperate regions.” -Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America 6 Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius “Their body is formed in an elongated oval, which they steer with a long, well-plumed tail and propel with well-set wings, the muscles of which are very large and powerful for the size of the bird. A bird seen gliding through the woods and close to the observer passes like a thought; and the eye tries in vain to see it again, but the bird is gone.” -John James Audubon, Passenger Pigeon “One generation comes and another generation passes away, but the earth abides forever. But what if the earth itself is passing away? And what if the animals, which we do not reckon as individuals but as ever-renewing species, should disappear along with it? What if the birds could never be seen again—by me or anyone else? What if the watcher and the watched disappeared together?” -Jonathan Rosen, The Life of the Skies 7 Chapter One Referred to as “the most prolific bird on the face of the earth,” (Steinberg 67), the Passenger Pigeon was the most abundant land bird on Earth at the time of European conquest of North America. With more Passenger Pigeons on the North American continent than all other bird species in the world combined, historians and biologists estimated populations of the bird at 3 to 5 billion (Cokinos 198). The birds, also known locally as wild pigeons, formed seemingly infinite flocks and dominated the air “in a sky- blackening mass” (Rosen 34) as they migrated from region to region, looking for food in the form of nuts and acorns. John James Audubon observed the pigeons in the early 1800s as they flew over forestland and fields in Kentucky. The birds were nothing short of beautiful; Audubon’s descriptions of the birds include terms such as “graceful,” “beautiful,” and “powerful,” and when describing their flight as a “beautiful spectacle,” Audubon writes of a “glistening sheet of azure” turning to a “rich deep purple” (34). Christopher Cokinos, in Hope is the Thing with Feathers, also describes the beauty of the birds. He notes that the pigeons, 16 inches long and slate-colored with violet, gold, and green around their necks, appeared to observers “as if the feathers had been sprinkled with a metallic rainbow dust” (200). Henry David Thoreau was also inspired by the beauty of the Passenger Pigeon, and in his journal from 1859, he wrote that their “dry slate color, like weather-stained wood…[was a] fit color for this aerial traveller, a more subdued and earthy blue than the sky, as its field (or path) is between the sky and the earth” (328). Despite the beauty of the species, humans often harvested the birds as a food source or simply killed the pigeons to prevent them from destroying grain crops or eating all of the nuts in the 8 forests, on which domestic hogs depended (Steinberg, Rhodes). In his essay “Passenger Pigeon,” Audubon writes of these killings in relation to the abundance of the Passenger Pigeons: Persons unacquainted with these birds might naturally conclude that such dreadful havoc would soon put an end to the species. But I have satisfied myself by long observation that nothing but the gradual diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease. They not infrequently quadruple their number yearly, and always at least double it. (37) In Audubon’s eyes, the extreme abundance of the Passenger Pigeons would certainly outweigh the effects of human slaughter. Because the Passenger Pigeon was the most abundant bird on the planet, overshadowing the American Robin by fifty to one, Audubon could not imagine a world without them. Witnessing the migrations of the Passenger Pigeon in the early nineteenth century, he could not have known that Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon, would die in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. In the mid-nineteenth century, the birds were being pushed to extinction. Farmers continued to kill the birds to protect their crops, and deforestation destroyed habitat and limited the availability of food resources such as nuts.