The Sense of a Songbird

Visually impaired birdwatchers and the breadth of perception

Bohemian Waxwing / © Christian Back / CC-BY via iNaturalist

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THE morning I guided a group of blind and visually impaired folks on a bird walk, it soon became clear that many had done their homework. About two weeks before the outing, I had sent everyone recordings of 10 species we’d likely encounter on the walk. My strategy worked.

Not long after our group took to the trail, a little brown bird sang out from somewhere in a thicket. “That’s a Song Sparrow!” declared one of the birders. (She unwittingly made my day.)

We stopped and listened — not only to the sparrow, but to the way the breeze shook spring’s early leaves. We smelled Balsam Poplar and Vermont mud. And as it sang, I did my best to describe for everyone the sparrow beyond what the rest of us can plainly see. I sought the sense of the sparrow: small, textured, unadorned, perky, curious, neighborly.

Farther along on the walk, it was enough to describe the noisy Yellow-bellied Sapsucker chicks, invisible to everyone in their tree cavity, as hungry, begging, and chitter-chattering. The Louisiana Waterthrush shouting from beside a woodland stream was, apart from its song, furtive and sparrow-like but with a silly walk.

Although it wasn’t in the homework, or even in the woods that morning, at some point one of the birdwatchers asked me to describe a Bohemian Waxwing. This was at first daunting because Bohemian Waxwing is, for me, a bird of extreme beauty and personal sanctity. How might I honor anything so elegant, sculpted, sensuous, and meaningful? What poured out of me nonetheless went something like this:

Well, if you were to nestle a Bohemian Waxwing in your palm, it would feel sincere and above all silky smooth. Were it to shift in your hand, similar to the way it carries itself in the world, the waxwing would be tame and docile, but moving with purpose and dignity. The wispy crest atop its head might caress your fingertips. From there, the silky feeling along your fingers would be broken by a lattice of bright white and loud yellow wing markings. You’d also feel a row of little bumps — the red, waxy droplets that give waxwings their name. Below its belly, basically at the waxwing’s “privates,” is a fluffy patch of sweet cinnamon feathers. And finally, that straight edge on your wrist would be the tail edge, marked as if dipped in screaming yellow paint.

Bohemian Waxwing eating fallen fruit / © Bryan Pfeiffer

Although faithful to my reply that morning, I’ll admit that my description above is an enhanced version of what I actually said on the spot to the birders. Still, I give you the sense of a waxwing, which of course is much more than the sum of its feathers.

To dwell in the company of any songbird is to reignite your senses. Heck, to spend time with an orchid or dandelion, a salamander or caterpillar, is to know the full capacity of your senses. We can experience so much beyond what we might be looking at in the natural (or not-so-natural) world. If only we take the opportunity.

This notion of “you look but do not see” is of course well-worn and worthy terrain in traditions from the Buddha to Thoreau to Nan Shepherd (see below) to Robin Wall Kimmerer. All of them wrote not only of looking, but of a resonance of body, mind, and environment, our neurons and senses firing away. Those senses are by their very nature subjective. And that’s fine — actually, it’s great. You alone get to experience, however the heck you want, what’s genuine and wild in the world. Nature’s good that way.

Yet there’s some irony in this. Even as humans deplete and destroy wild diversity nearly everywhere, nature does not judge us. What survives our carnage is neither bitter nor vindictive — it just keeps giving, even as we ourselves become depleted by its decline. We are collateral damage of our own making.

Still, finding what you seek in nature remains fairly simple — the visually impaired birders reminded me of that on our walk: go outside, slow down, stop often, sit, recline, listen, smell, taste, touch, and if you are so able, look around. In awareness there is fidelity to yourself and loyalty to the world. Or as Mary Oliver wrote: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

News for Paying Subscribers

For the good people who make Chasing Nature possible:

• The next episode of the Chasing Nature podcast is an “Ask Me Anything” exclusively for you. Send me your questions about, well, anything: birds, insects, plants, field gear, photography, reading, writing (including my process of thinking, writing, and editing for these essays). Your deadline is February 2. I’ll make us a podcast episode.

• Although it won’t work for all paying subscribers, plenty of you live near enough to Vermont to attend a Chasing Nature gathering this spring or summer. We’ll meet up at a state park or some other preserve for nature walks and a picnic. Watch for details. For subscribers at the Founder level, if you happen to be near my peregrinations this year, I’ll do what I can to meet you for a personal outing. If you’re interested, send me a note with your general whereabouts; perhaps our paths will meet.

• At the end of this post is a rough map of Bohemian Waxwing sightings so far in 2026. If you’re near or in that purple zone, I’ve got insider advice and clickable maps so that you might discover this attractive songbird on your own. Find that perk and more at our Go Wild portal’s Sightings page, another expression of gratitude for your paid subscription.

Postscripts

• Credit where it’s due: I organized that birdwalk some years ago with the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. We walked the grounds of the amazing Birds of Vermont Museum. I resolve to revive this walk in 2026.

• Nan Shepherd (1893–1981), poet, novelist, naturalist, and independent mountain woman of the Scottish Highlands, wrote The Living Mountain, which is among the most perceptive and eloquent books of nature, exploration, and experience that I know (and which is much too unknown in the world). I’m re-reading The Living Mountain, which is even better the second time around.

Bohemian Waxwing sightings / Sources: eBird and Google Maps