Birdsong

Annie Cotten

In May of 2020, I came across some meme or shared self-help-y essay, suggesting to singles that there was soul-saving virtue—while living through those terrifying, confusing, deadly early months of the Covid 19 lockdown—in taking care of a living thing that wasn’t oneself. “Even if all you can manage is one plant,” was the gist, “that act of love and care will do good and bring some element of peace.” So I thought, “Why not?” I certainly didn’t imagine the effort could make things worse. I mean, perhaps in making this commitment I’d end up killing a plant, which wouldn’t be terribly uplifting, but neither would that outcome add a significant quantity of grief or anxiety to what I was already experiencing. I went to The Plant Gallery in New Orleans and chose a large aloe vera; I decided she was a lady, named her Star, and set to self-generating love and taking care of her.

In September of 2020, now surrounded by more than forty houseplants and a porch taken over by enormous pots filled with anything and everything I found during my (at minimum) weekly trips to Harold’s in the Bywater and the City Park plant sale, I scanned dozens, over days, of posts from every animal rescue in the Greater New Orleans area, literally begging residents to foster animals. This was after Hurricane Laura had decimated Lake Charles and its surrounds, and already at-capacity Louisiana shelters were overrun and overwhelmed by an influx of temporarily surrendered and permanently abandoned pets. It was a tragic situation for all—owners, pets, helpless shelters; “Even if it’s for one week,” they pleaded, “help us feed and house these animals.” At this point in my life, up until the Covid lockdown, I had been traveling for years—about 70% of the time—as a not-for-profit fundraiser. A refrain of mine in those days, when asked the always welcome question, “Are you dating?” was that I hadn’t the time for so much as a houseplant; that home was a place to drop bags, do laundry, and hide between trips, and time not working was for friends and sleep. But here I was, a lone human, now working from home, isolated from friends, and grounded for the foreseeable future. I had time. I had plants! I had kept them alive for months! I could help! I signed up with two local rescues and received a call from one immediately. What happened next is quite a long story, so I’ll skip to the end, which is really a beginning: I became a failed foster and adopted a goofy, half-wild, rambunctious, stubborn, impish Plott Hound I named Puck.

In September of 2021—at the tail end of Covid lockdowns, broad public masking, and avoidance of third spaces—I moved myself, most of my plants, and my beloved Puck to Atlanta, Georgia. “Even if it’s temporary,” I thought to myself, “it offers more opportunity, diversity, and space than I have access to here.” I had been yearning for the lifestyle a city like Atlanta promised for a long time—plants and Puck upped the ante—and boy, did I get it. I rented a sweet little 1948 G.I. cottage on a third of an acre, partially wooded, with a deck and soon to be fenced backyard, and Puck and I set to exploring our little patch. Now, enthusiasm for birds had struck years before on a trip to Nashville when, during a solo walk around Radnor Lake, I was visited by both a pileated woodpecker (wow) and a scarlet tanager (WOW), but with my work and travels seldom offering time for birding in my NOLA days, it became a “one day . . .” hobby, and apparently, that day had finally arrived. After an Atlanta fall and winter full of countless eastern bluebirds, northern cardinals, American robins, chipping sparrows, song sparrows, mockingbirds, Carolina wrens, brown thrashers, and tufted titmice, I put feeders out in the spring to better host them, along with ruby crowned kinglets, eastern towhees, dark-eyed juncos, yellow-rumped warblers, pine warblers, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, brown-headed nuthatches, white-breasted nuthatches, ruby-throated hummingbirds, black-capped chickadees, eastern phoebes, gray catbirds, American goldfinches, purple finches, house finches and mourning doves to name . . . most. When I left that house, I left the bird feeders with instructions: these are your friends, take care of them.

Last year, in March of 2024, I bought my first home and moved in a month later. “Even if there is upheaval,” friends said, “you’ll have a stable asset.” I installed bird feeders before I installed myself. I also brought Puck on the weekends and started working on the yard and garden before taking up residency. It remains the case that the dining room curtains are not hung, the dishwasher rack is not repaired, the guest bathroom vanity is not replaced, and certain articles of furniture are not purchased, all because I have directed the bulk of my slim home-improvement funds to the outdoors. I have a patio and deck with a garden nested between, and a backyard that, after clearing invasive privet, bamboo, English ivy, poison ivy, kudzu, Virginia creeper, and every other type of vine one could imagine, and saving several sweet gum trees and cherry laurels in the process, I am now reforesting with native swamp magnolia, dogwood, oak, and a new gift from a generous bird, a pignut hickory.

A few weeks ago, scrolling who knows which social media platform, I saw . . . a meme? an interpretation of actual scholarship? an uneducated assumption? a made-up lie? . . . claiming that birdsong relaxes us because, when we were all tribal hunter-gatherers, birdsong meant safety—all quiet—and “the body remembers.” I don’t remember exactly where I read this and am pretty darn far from being a woo-woo adherent (though I do enjoy my essential oils and the odd herbal remedy), but that notion clearly spoke to me. “Is that it?” I thought, “Does that to some extent explain my songbird obsession and the hypnotic, borderline addictive effects of my backyard?”

In the year since I moved into my house, I have often referred to its outdoor space as my favorite room in the house, and so it is. To acknowledge the theme for which I am writing, I have never much had my feet on the ground—they floated above the earth when I was young and fanciful and sank pretty deep in the muck as I became older and more anxious. But in this new experience, this backyard oasis, I gather the gifts borne of disaster that seem, in spite of my insistence on reason, rather cosmic in retrospect—my plants, my dog, and “my” birds—and walk and work upon the earth. I pull the tenacious vines, and weed and plant the garden, and restore native plants in the yard for my avian and rodent friends, and clean feeders, and play tug of war with my dog. I put the phone down. I stop. I sometimes sit for hours—hours—doing absolutely nothing but turning my gaze from flower, to dog, to bird, to tree. It is the only time and the only place in the world now that I feel any kind of real ease—any deep and physical sense of safety.

The past decade has been a special kind of tournament for literally everyone on the planet, and for those of us at a certain spot in middle age, still trying to make one more score before the end of the game, it vanished our last bit of youth and a particular vein of optimism that came with it. You know those years without an autumn? When it’s hot until November and then there’s a deep freeze and that’s it? That is what this past decade felt like for so many I know—a summer that turned to winter overnight. There is so much more to say about that, I could write a book. I might.

In the meantime, I’ll just say that it is no surprise to me that I am not the only one to become a plant, garden, pet, and bird enthusiast in the last ten years. As we all fight sinking deeper into the muck and away from light and hope, these are living things that tether us, anchor us to ground—without conversation, without expectation, without commiseration—living things we simply care for and watch and walk and water and tend and listen to and play with and love. The birding bug has become a humorous symbol—commonly conveyed via coffee mugs, t-shirts, greeting cards, refrigerator magnets, and memes—of people of a “certain age.” But this is a recent appropriation. I think it has less to do with “This is fifty,” than “This may be the end of the world/politics/economics/friendship/community/climate/education/family as we know them and here, for a moment, is beauty and peace.” I don’t believe we have always gravitated en masse to ornithophilia upon turning forty-five or fifty; I am of a mind that this broad attraction to birds (and plants and pets) may have more to do with the feelings of safety that accompany them, that this memory of birdsong DOES live in the body, a la the aforementioned meme. A green plant, a happy dog, a singing bird—these things say, “All is well!” when virtually nothing else does.

And so I am on my deck, in my spot, stopping occasionally to swivel—flower, dog, bird, tree. The last bits of fluff from the cottonwood trees are floating around me like fairies. The cardinals and wrens are making a pleasing racket, and the robins are singing sweetly. Three chickadees are in the mimosa watching a pair of mourning doves sitting in the basket feeder as if it’s a nest—they do this every afternoon around this time, and it makes me laugh. My trees are growing, the flowers are blooming, and Puck is watching for squirrels—all hell will break loose when he sees one, but even that will be sweet; his hound’s bay perhaps another stabilizing memory. In a moment, I will take advantage of the sun dipping behind the house to weed and plant a new bee balm. I will put this digital apparatus away, along with my phone, and let go of the heartbreak, angst, dread, frustration, disappointment, and fear that inform so much of my waking life. I am lucky beyond measure, beyond reason, to have this, and I know it. This is where, and with whom, for now, for moments every day, I am of and on the ground, and all is well.