Emily Ford

The world is changing every moment, but the world really changed in 2020. Among so much loss, I found solace in my journal entries from the fall of 2019, when I was waking up every day before dawn, walking in circles on the sandy banks of the Dolores River, and capturing wild birds for science. My prequel to the pandemic was also highly informed by the “Real and Unreal” tales of Ursula K. Le Guin. Her science fiction and fantasy carried me through The Times, from which I’m pretty sure I emerged with every cell of my body displaced or rearranged. From the thick uncertainty of that first year, to the unspoken haze of nowadays, the memories of my first season bird banding have been boiled, too. Within this never ending, well, end, of life-as-we-know-it, there is also a fierce, collective momentum to remember, to dream, and to find ourselves where it matters.

The chickadee always seems to be where it matters, caching, singing, traveling. They always seem to be . . . around. Have you heard one yet today? This little companion is a scientifically-proven genius rememberer, and she wasn’t about to let me forget the desert, and the river, and my walks, and of course—the birds.

Between then and now, we have learned that nearly three billion birds have vanished over the past fifty years. But at that banding station under a cottonwood’s enchanting marquee, we would simply count and release whatever came our way. Sometimes we wouldn’t catch anything for hours. On quiet days, my teammates listened to the static of my field note scribbles, and I am grateful for their patience, teaching, and guiding presence in these memories as well. While not all of my journal entries made it into the final version, I’ve included an additional excerpt here:  

Some birds fly into the net multiple times a day. I extract them from another fitful tangle and release them towards researcher-free vegetation. But if we recapture a bird after a few days or a couple of weeks, it could share important information about migration preparation and timing. An especially lucky moment is meeting a ‘re-cap’ from previous years or distant banding stations. Instead of one data point on a plot, each recap shares a personal geography mapped by light, magnetism, atmosphere, and landscape. The birds I have recaptured are some of the most personal wildlife encounters I’ve ever experienced. They are the original storytellers of far-off places, taking flight into uncertain winds, crossing invisible boundaries, and perpetually arriving home.

I often wonder how many human eyes have seen each exact bird before they are clutched in my hand. Then, I wonder if each bird leaving my hand will ever be seen again. So I try hard to see them. Not only if they’re a male or female, “hatch-year” or older, but also how a fast-beating heart warms up the cotton bag as I gently carry it from the nets to our banding station. I watch the sunshine introduce itself to the patch of iridescence on a Blue Grosbeak’s formative feathers. I discover that the Ruby-crowned Kinglet’s crown is rarely ruby; each one blazes a different hue from the spectrum of red rock sunsets. When a flock of twenty Bushtits takes us half an hour to extract and process, I witness their fervid conversations as they wait for each other to be released one by one.

I have returned to these scribbles for years, like a bird to a cache. The reasons why I share them now are also written there, in the margins of the salt and sand-leathered, bird poop-blotted pages, and are now much more legible in front of you. Some underlined, circled, and earmark notes read:

“Science IS imagination”

“Pay passionate attention. Appreciate the familiar. Notice what is ‘normal.’”

“Birds teach.”

“Birds smell good.”

“Birds are becoming my reason for EVERYTHING!” (this was written on the busiest day of the season, and is understandably the only thing written that day)

And finally, “The key to human survival, much like the chickadee knows, is simple: remembering the place we were, and staying committed to the places we can go. And that, my non-feathered friends, is accomplished through story.”

Thank you for reading and joining me in these reflections. For any personal follow up, you may email me at emilyford.ca(at)gmail.com or connect on Instagram @em_fo_. Bird banding stations are scattered all over the world, and many allow visitors and offer presentations and trainings. There may be one near you!