Molnar: Bird Chorus

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(Host) Most of us look for birds with our eyes, but they can also
be "seen" with our ears, as discovered by commentator Martha Molnar, a public
relations and freelance writer who moved to Vermont
in 2008.

(Molnar) I’m
walking through heavy morning fog, alone in the world. Each step opens a small
circle of visible air that closes with the next step. But I don’t need to see
with my eyes, because I’ve been learning to see with my ears.

Once,
the vast bird chorus that reaches its climax in the spring was just a pleasing
cacophony. I hardly thought about the hundreds of individual birds in their
dozens of varieties that produce the entertainment. But after living through
several Vermont winters, I
celebrate each returning bird. I hear the robins first, and a couple of phoebes
engaged in a duet. Then the red-winged blackbirds and the swallows return en
masse, and the few bluebirds. Finally, toward the end of May, the bobolinks
return, turning our fields into an ecstasy of drunken song. 

Those of
us who have never studied music can still enjoy it. But I imagine that the
listening experience is very different when you can unravel what you’re hearing
and appreciate the beauty of a melody, the complex blend of instruments and
voices, the rhythm, the texture, the key changes. This applies to art and
writing as well. I’ve watched artist friends arrested by individual
brushstrokes, and writers by a particular phrase that others skim over.

But paying attention over time can make up for lack of
formal training. And so I’m slowly learning to untangle the bird chorus,
learning to recognize its individual voices and its particular arias. I can
easily distinguish the sharp whistle of a robin from the mellow one of a
bluebird, and the musical chip of a warbler from the cooing of a dove. At
first, I didn’t recognize the scream of the red-tailed hawk or the chatter of
the oriole, but knew these were new sounds. And I consulted my trusty guidebook
to identify them.

Today, I can "see" each nearby bird as it calls its
warning at my passing, and beyond these, many of those that now populate the
fields. I’m proud and happy… but also worried and fearful… because while they
sound plentiful, each year the returning birds are fewer, and they’re hardly
heard any more in the nearby woods.  Our
songbirds are victims of a perfect storm. They’re being decimated by pesticides
and loss of habitat, here and even more so in their winter homes in Latin
America.

Part of the answer lies in our eating habits. Produce
imported from Latin America is three to four times more
likely to violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide
residues than the same foods grown in the United
States. Those luscious raspberries you buy
in January mean fewer of our birds returning in spring.

To care about the birds, we have to know them. So I walk,
listen and pay close attention to the richness all around us – as I learn to
hear with my eyes and see with my ears.

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