All posts tagged with bird

In the wake of the Quakers’ immigration to North America, a taste for the study of nature came “quietly” into being among descendants from the “tolerant” zones, notably the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

It’s almost a year now since we moved to Bloomfield, and I’m still not over my disappointment at our new New Jersey home’s failure to honor its most distinguished citizen. Not a statue, not a plaque to be found anywhere; and that short boulevard leading to the cemetery turns out, alas, to be named for Woodrow.

Imagine away the accumulated knowledge of the past 250 years. Forget that there is such a thing as a field guide. Let google vanish from memory.

And put yourself into the forest primeval of southeastern North America on a warm summer night in the middle of the eighteenth century. Above the rasping of the cicadas and the creaking of the tree crickets, beyond the yowls and hoots and delicate whistles of the owls, you hear the strange syncopated whistles of what has to be a bird.

But which one?