The essay “The Listening” was previously published on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!
One of the first things that hit me after Arriving on the farm was the quiet. I’ve written about seeking silence in blog posts before, but landing here, I think I’ve found it. Of course, our remote rural location presents challenges when it comes to infrastructure this city girl always took for granted – such as pulling in electricity for our greenhouse and digging wells for irrigation, but the remoteness is also a gift. In the evening, when the crew goes home and work ends on the greenhouse construction site, peace descends like a blanket.
There is something else to that quiet first thing in the morning, birdsong. The sun rose this morning at 5:30 and the crescendo of the symphony hit at about 6:15. My pleasure in birds is nothing new. I sat for hours watching the coastline varieties in Rhode Island: osprey, swans, cranes, egrets. My awareness was heightened during COVID, but given the din of ambient background noise in our community the, the ability to really hear them was difficult. With one exception being those osprey babies screaming to be fed.
Birdsong makes mornings on Flynn Creek Farm magical. I sit on my mat in front of an open window with closed eyes and marvel that it isn’t one of those recordings piped into a five-star spa but real life. The sound id feature on the Merlin app is turned on while I am meditating and recording bird calls with the aim of identifying which birds are calling from the trees outside. My visual and sound id’s total thirty-six varieties on the farm to date. Many sparrows, wrens and warblers, blackbirds, crows, and goldfinch, but even my precious hummingbirds and a huge bald eagle the other day.
I plan to make a recording such as the one below a daily morning practice. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Cornell school of Ornithology and all they have created with their apps, both Ebird and Merlin. I wouldn’t call it making birding accessible for dummies, but it’s pretty close. A novice like myself is now able to learn the calls and physical characteristics of our native bird population.
Reading A Sand County Almanac in which Aldo Leopold chronicled his observations on his farm month to month in the early half of the Twentieth century, I feel connected to a long tradition of humans celebrating the arrival of spring with green fields full of dandelions and the returning migratory birds. I may be able to hear their song from inside the house each morning, but they are visceral reminders of what beauty lies outdoors and to get out more, I hear them beckon to get out soon, as soon as possible. Their call is loud but also soothing, a connection to nature that is effortless, reminding me I am just a small piece in a very large system and that I can barely start to understand the mystery or the majesty.
Still, my nerdy side has gotten addicted to this “Life List” I have started on Merlin. Just as I enjoy collecting pins of mountains skied and vertical feet descended, just my Apple watch and Oura ring help me track steps taken and sleep quality, birding is my new data analytics obsession. Don’t get me started on cataloguing the species of wild plant life on different parts of the farm with the Inaturalist app- way less user friendly in my opinion. But, nonetheless, part of becoming in tune with this land means gaining a fluency and ability to identify what lives here, both the native and invasive.
We plan to convert approximately 40 acres into a pollinator and wetland habitat which involves a costly program of spreading seed this fall. Luckily there is money available from the county to offset the cost of the seeds. In addition to the dedicated pollinator habitat, we want to incorporate pollinator strips throughout the farm. The hope is to increase the population of insects and, as a result, birds. The increased biodiversity will benefit everything we are trying to grow including crops and future livestock. And guess who is excited to be the amateur data collector documenting what happens?