For the Love of Birds
Mid-August and and the wild turkeys have already eaten their fill of the summer bunch grasses, as they grab seed heads and strip them with their beaks walking through my meadows. Some of the seed fell to the ground so they are both harvesters and planters.
Yellow warblers are my favorite summer residents. Sometimes I’ll sit for an hour looking with my naked eye for their golden plumage in the leaf camouflage of the cottonwood trees where they feed. Females and newly fledged, first-year warblers are even harder to see with leaves beginning to change to subtler colors in late summer which masks their plumage.
The warbler’s distinctive song carries for long distances as well. It wafts on the air in unsuspected places. Often I hear it clearly while driving past houses that have trees in the distance. It really carries on the wind, making me smile, and I always say hello. But even that song from afar is now only an occasional hearing.
Closer to home, spotted towhees are still feeding on the sunflower seeds that inevitably drop to the ground from the vertical, metal mesh bird feeder each time a chickadee lands on it. With a seed in her beak, the chickadee will fly away to a tree branch, perch to crack it open to eat the oil-rich kernel inside. But lately she is stashing the seeds whole in the bark of the trees so she can gather them in winter. Even in snow, she will remember where she put them as her internal mapping and memory kicks in—a matter of survival.
I am very much an amateur birdwatcher, but my friend Shane Sater really knows our beloved migrating songbirds. He is a naturalist. The story he produced for us as a podcast back in 2023, called “Earth Song,” is one of my favorite Voices of the Wild Earth programs. If you listen to our Podcast Reprise, you’ll learn a great deal about the birds that surrounded us with music back in May and earlier this summer. Their music will create a memory for you to savor until next spring when the birds return to delight us once more with their lovely presence.
Shane also talks about other Earth music that communicates like wolf songs and the Nez Perce Tribe’s great respect for their animal brother and teacher. These voices, wild and human, were recorded by me many years ago. Wolves, like some elusive songbirds, are rarely seen but occasionally heard when you are in the Idaho or Montana backcountry, although more often in a place like Yellowstone National Park where they live and roam freely and unafraid of human beings.
Song in whatever animal form is both meaningful and valuable as it connects us in understanding our interrelated Earth family. Enjoy listening! And no, those aren’t wild turkeys in the accompanying photograph, they are sandhill cranes! Thanks, Shane, for your beautiful photographs of birds.
Jane Fritz
8/20/25