I recently downloaded a birdsong identification app, and I’ve really noticed how much it’s affected my attention. I’m walking the same routes as usual, yet they seem transformed by my altered attention. I’ve become aware of how most of the birdsong near me is from robins, blue tits, or great tits. I’ve started to be able to identify some species by their song (beyond the herring gull who make themselves fairly obvious), and know more or less who to expect along certain journeys. There’s usually a magpie along a certain corner, a robin in a certain tree, or sparrows in a certain bush. It’s been a joy to notice just how many different species there are, as well as to start to transform how I walk through town. I often listen to music or podcasts when walking, and am now deliberately spending more time without, instead listening out for birds.
This feels like an antidote to spending a lot of time online, either on news sites or social media. I’m seeing and hearing a lot of people talk about how they are ‘done’ with the internet, and would like some more time offline. Even if the starting point is an app on my phone, listening to birds still connects me more with the rest of nature than with the internet. It took me a second to remember to write ‘the rest of nature’ rather than ‘nature’, as I try to deliberate include myself. There’s been so much separation between human beings and nature that it feels good to re-connect, although my language around it is still clumsy at times, e.g. ‘other animals’ rather than ‘animals’. It seems though like many people are craving a more analogue life, away from the rise of AI, the confusion of what might be real or fake, and the terror of what is real.
We had a cat sadly die last year, but he was definitely a big part of being able to re-connect with my own nature, as well as with other beings. Having a pet feels like a gateway into other creatures, as I start to see birds, squirrels, foxes and so on in a different light. Not just as wild animals, but as fellow beings going about their business. Whatever I could see in our cat, it might be a good shorthand to call it a ‘soul’, or his ‘beingness’, suddenly seems accessible in other creatures too. It doesn’t feel like anthropomorphising, as I also start to notice how they notice me. The birds are no longer objects in a scenery, but subjects peering back at me, and I become the object. This is what Sartre called “The Look” in his book Being and Nothingness. Although Sartre and de Beauvoir spoke of being “seen” like this only in reference to other people, if I imagine a soul in other beings then “The Look” of a bird may have a similar effect. I oscillate between being a subject of my own life and an object for others; between mastery of my life and being crushed by the world; of having the taste of life in my mouth and being as insignificant as an insect (to borrow examples of this ambiguity from de Beauvoir).
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t usually philosophise amongst the birds. Usually I’m just ‘there’. But it can be surprising to see a fellow creature looking back at you. I imagine what they must see, if I’m a danger or a source of food (or potentially actual food), or just another big creature lumbering around. It’s afterwards when I sit down at my keyboard or discuss this with colleagues that I’m reminded of the existentialist theories on why it can be arresting to be seen, and how life affirming it is at the same time. I relate strongly to the ‘ambiguity of existence’. It feels in one moment I’m in control of my destiny, and the next my life is in the hands of the fates.
“The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces. Though they are masters of the atomic bomb, yet it is created only to destroy them.” de Beavoir, 1947
This quote struck me when reading The Ethics of Ambiguity, as recently the US threatened to wipe out a “whole civilisation” in Iran if they don’t submit to their demands. And as the crisis engulfs more of the world, effecting each of us in complex ways, it can feel overwhelming and terrifying. No wonder that I want to escape into birdsong. Yet it feels more than just escaping, because as I notice birds noticing me, I’m reminded of both my power to affect my world and my lack of it, my insignificance. There is something comforting in that insignificance, in the reminder that I am no more than an insect. Not to abdicate responsibility, but to know that I can’t change events beyond my control, so why worry about them? Even as humans cause huge decreases in insect diversity. If the human race destroys itself, insects would probably not mind, and may thrive. Measured in the timeline of species, it’ll almost certainly be human beings who are more insignificant: insects have been hanging around for about 400 millions years, and humans only 2.5.
Of course on the other hand, “The Look” reminds me that I am a being who exists and effects things, a being whom other begins can see. And with that comes responsibility, unavoidably. I’m looking forward to David Attenborough’s new TV show about gardens, as a reminder that there are things we can do to affect the climate crisis. It is so easy to become overwhelmed at the vastness and feel too insignificant to effect anything. And yet when I hear the same robin chirping every day in the same tree, it brings the climate crisis into focus. There are actions I can take like planting, keeping pets indoors during the Spring months, recycling and so on which do have a positive effect to local wildlife. Downloading a bird identification app shifts my attention, and then with that attention shifted I can shift my actions too.
Connecting with birds is a reminder that I am both significant and insignificant, and that I move between the two. I don’t resolve this ambiguity, it just is. Even as I write this I can see a bee collecting pollen from a plant on my windowsill. The bee can’t see me, but I see the benefits in keeping busy too. The bee may not have a choice but to keep busy. I’m gifted/cursed with the choice of how to keep busy, of where my attention goes. The bee is knocking against my windowsill now, perhaps confused by the glass, perhaps wanting to come and investigate me. In realising there’s no way through, they flying away, taking a different path. It feels so indulgent to write this way, perhaps slightly poetically, when others don’t have the time to sit and notice the bees. And perhaps it seems like I have it all figured out, when of course I don’t. Sometimes clients imagine that I have all the answers. As more grey hairs appear in my beard I can perhaps lean into that role of appearing wise. In truth I’m sometimes/often scared about the world, and uncertain of my place in it. So I listen for the birds.
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