Among the Songbirds, My Fading Serenade

Knowing When It Is Time to Step Aside

Blackburnian Warbler / © Bryan Pfeiffer

EVERY JUNE FOR 30 YEARS, nearly half of my life, I would rise before dawn and bushwhack an assigned route through a forest in northern Vermont. Along the way, I would stop at the same five flagged trees for 10 minutes each to count every bird I could see or hear. Among them was Blackburnian Warbler, which, in the end, would remind me of my age.

Although his face, throat, and upper breast glow like fire in the woods, the best way to locate a Blackburnian Warbler is first to listen for the male’s song. In each rendition, he rubs together a couple of high, raspy notes, ending with an even higher, thin “szeeeee.” When the spruce boughs and summer leaves block our views, recognizing songs like this is the most efficient way to identify birds in the forest. A good ear is beneficial to any birdwatcher, and it’s essential to a biologist monitoring songbird populations.

My annual trek through those woods — at a place called Bear Swamp — was among 32 similar routes in a long-term forest-bird population study run by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. We volunteers count birds to witness what we’re losing — and to inspire ideas for what we might do about it. In its first 25 years, the study documented a 14 percent overall population decline among 125 forest bird species, Blackburnian Warbler among them (Faccio 2017).

But now that I’m older and grayer, my ears can no longer hear the Blackburnian Warbler’s high note, nor can I discern some of the other distant songs in the forest. Year after year, my dawn chorus has been fading away — one note at a time. Which means I’m no longer reliable for counting songbirds on my route. Although it was hard to admit, it was time for me to go, to step aside and let someone else count the birds at Bear Swamp.

Birdwatchers often joke that those high warbler notes are the first things to go. Not for me. The first thing, about 20 years ago, was my ability to read my compass dial without eyeglasses. Next, arthritis and a torn meniscus brought pain to my right knee with every step along my forest route. I also fall down more often on these bushwhacks, not because of my bad knee, and not even because a heart attack put me down in other woods back in 2017. I fall because, for better or worse, my mind propels me onward at a pace the rest of my body can no longer keep.

Although my audiologist tells me that my hearing loss is moderate and not unusual for someone my age, it’s nonetheless the most poignant deficit of my years: I now know two silent springs — one owing to my advancing age, the other to humanity’s relentless assault on wildlife and wild places. The woods are quieter now regardless of how well we might hear them.

I recognize that aging is about acceptance, about slowing down — my fading chorus is preordained. As for birds, the standard threats shouldn’t be inevitable, but it seems they are: industrial agriculture, habitat destruction, invasive species, domestic cats, the climate crisis, to name but a few.

Yet even as I recognize that my aging might bring me perspective and wisdom, I’m having a tough time applying it to the global decline of birds and the overall loss of biological diversity and abundance. I do not like growing old while nature grows more imperiled.

I reluctantly gave up my route at Bear Swamp. Not because there was nothing left for me in the forest — far from it. Instead, I quit precisely owing to my diminishing skills. Even with bifocals, hearing aids, a knee replacement, and three cardiac stents, I had concluded that my ability to detect Blackburnian Warblers and other songbirds was no longer up to the required standards of our bird population study. Thirty years. The most enduring thing in my life so far. No more.

But the pre-dawn serenade, however depleted, continues. I turned over the route to one of my former graduate students, Sean Beckett, a skilled field naturalist half my age. Even as I leave for him an imperfect world, Sean leaves me with hope: He has the temerity to care enough about what’s next for all of us, and the ears and legs and skills to do something about it.

My work is done at Bear Swamp. I like to think I left gracefully. And although we are both damaged goods, nature offers me infinite other rewards: the quiet butterflies of summer meadows, the furtive orchids of northern bogs, the muffled forests of winter woods. They need protection as well.

Although I may not hear the final Blackburnian Warbler note, there is no shame in aging. I can still discover an exquisitely rare butterfly (even if it took me 21 years), serve as a member of Vermont’s Endangered Species Committee, and help improve city parks here in Montpelier.

Most of all, here at Chasing Nature, my third act, I do my best to be in the natural world, to listen and see, to feel and think, and to write in order to bring all of us closer to nature.

Whether or not we can hear the warblers sing, so much remains to be done.

---

---

Postscripts and References

• This is a revised and updated version of an essay that first appeared in The Boston Globe in 2021, the year I gave up the forest bird route. It seems relevant this week.

• Although I confess to not being formally involved, I’m inspired in part by Th!rd Act, founded by fellow Vermonter (and Substacker)

  Bill McKibben
  and guided by a most inspiring, potent, and heroic staff and advisory council (many of whom are among my heroes).

• Faccio, S.; Lambert, J.D.; Lloyd, J. 2017: The Status of Vermont Forest Birds: A Quarter Century of Monitoring. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4880837.v1

New For Paying Subscribers: Butterflies

Chasing Nature’s GO WILD portal now features butterflies: two videos and two downloads to help you discover and enjoy these gossamer insects. Find them, and other good stuff, in GO WILD’s Classroom.

Offering various extras, GO WILD is an expression of my gratitude to Chasing Nature’s community of paying subscribers. You help make it happen for everyone. Thanks for being here.