By Jennifer Powers

My oldest son Finn became obsessed with birds when he was two years old.  He remained obsessed for two years.  Bedtime stories about talking trains and farm animals were replaced by negotiations over how many plates we could look at from the “Field Guide to The Birds of Costa Rica.” 

It surprised me that he didn’t gravitate to the flashy and colorful birds like the toucans and hummingbirds that attract me. He often lobbied to visit the much drabber pages on owls or wading shore birds.  

As a newer mother determined to nurture my son’s budding interest in birds (and perhaps no doubt motivated by the secret desire that he eventually become a field biologist like me), I invested in a pair of kid-friendly binoculars.  They were yellow and made of plastic.  They had a flimsy strap to hang around your neck, but they did magnify the world and bring distant birds a little closer into view. 

Now came the hard part.  How do you explain to a two-year-old what binoculars are for and how to use them? 

I modeled using binoculars to bring imaginary birds into sharp focus, hoping he would mimic me and serendipitously stumble upon real birds in the process of looking through the lenses. This, of course, failed. 

Then, I tried a more intellectual approach, explaining the problem and how the tool of binoculars can help us resolve it. “Some birds are far away,” I repeated often. I followed with, “Some birds are far away, and if we look at them through binoculars, they seem closer.” 

This, of course, also failed. Then two things happened that would become all tangled up in a two-year-old’s brain—a web of causality and connection that shook him to his tiny core.   

A woodpecker flew into the window at the top of the staircase landing and broke its neck. It must have died instantly. I certainly hope so. It was right outside the window on the roof of the eave that covers the front porch.  Although its neck was twisted, its crest was still red—a rare flash of color in the spare winter landscape in St. Paul, Minnesota.  My husband and I left it there far too long, a frozen birdsicle outside the window at the top of the stairs.   

We were preoccupied with other concerns.  Walter, my father-in-law, had slipped on the ice and hit his head.  He was in the hospital vacillating between life and death. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, his skin seemed sallow and drained of color.  In moments of lucidity, he would ask about me—I was seven months pregnant. Then, he would slide back into a near comatose state—unresponsive.  This state of flux, back and forth between he’ll be okay / he will not be okay / he’ll be okay / he will not be okay, lasted three weeks and then he finally died.  

Here were three seemingly unrelated events: 

I bought my son some binoculars 

A woodpecker crashed into our window 

My father-in-law Walter died 

But the two-year-old brain does not draw sharp boundaries around things and compartmentalize events into boxes.   

One night after the funeral Finn became agitated. He paced the floor in circles, as if to physically draw the words and feelings out of his body.  Finn was a beat poet kayaking class-five rapids on a stream of consciousness.  His free association started like this: 

Some birds are far away… 

Some birds are far away… 

All birds are far away… 

Some birds are dead… 

Finn had clear evidence of this last point. Unfortunately, in all the drama of Walter teeter-tottering between life and death, we had left the dead woodpecker on the eave in winter’s deep chill for too long, a visceral reminder of death at the top of the staircase. 

As he circled the room, the next thought that came to him was “All birds are dead”.  We struggled to convince him that all birds are not dead and probably some birds were very much alive in our yard at that very moment.  He looked at us and stated flatly, “Dead bird on roof.” We confirmed that indeed the bird on the roof of the eave was dead. Then he questioned us: “Grandpa on roof?” We reassured him that, no, when people die, they do not go to the roof. Then he cracked a smile, and he shook his head at us, “That would be silly.”  My husband cleaned up the bird the next day. 

I think this was Finn’s attempt to reconcile the confusing ideas of closeness and distance—some birds really are far away but you can bring them closer with an illusion—a trick of the lens—and other profound truths. Things live and then they die: woodpeckers, grandfathers, and eventually you and me. 

Finn has long since moved on from birds.  After the bird phase he fell in love with dinosaurs for two years, a reverse trip from the tip back down a branch on the evolutionary tree of life. Dinosaurs gave way to numbers, and now he is a college student studying math. I know that he sees beauty in how math silently underpins every aspect of being in this universe: patterns and probabilities, imaginary numbers and theorems that have yet to be proved. He seems more at ease with the mysteries that are hidden in math, and the mysteries that math can reveal. 

I’ve since gotten into birding myself.  More of a casual observer than a fanatical enthusiast.  I bought a pair of real binoculars. I downloaded the Merlin app.  But I will never know the names and calls of all the birds. As for our family of four now, the catchphrase “some birds are far away” has come to stand in for a multitude of vexing situations we can’t quite yet grasp. We are learning to live with birds in the distance.  

---

Jennifer Powers is a professor of ecology based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her ecological research focuses on understanding the dynamics, function, and resilience of forested ecosystems in the tropics, where she has studied for over thirty years. She is also deeply interested in the connections between art and science, and teaches nature journaling to a wide variety of audiences. Her and her husband’s son Finn is still in college and their youngest son will leave for college soon. This is her first essay to be published.