Tshering Dema
L aramie— with its vast expanse of sagebrush, aspens, conifers, and riparian areas is a haven to a variety of birds. The water fowl—ducks, geese, teals, shovelers, pintails, swans, grebes, herons, pelicans, egrets, terns, shore birds, and gulls—swim and wade in the ponds, rivers, and lakes of Laramie.
Other birds like falcons, hawks, and eagles soar in Laramie’s skies looking for food on the ground from their high vantage point. Male sage grouses strut and dance in their leks, in an open field surrounded by sage brush, to impress the females. Woodpeckers, with their chisel-shaped bills, drill the soft cottonwood trees and dead Aspen, looking for a nesting place.
From a distance, mourning dove calls “coo-OO-oo,”
as I walk on Garfield Street heading downtown. Songs and calls of other songbirds accompany me as I walk from my apartment on 22nd Street to get to the University. Outside Wyoming Hall, a brown creeper clings to the bark of a conifer, using its stiff tail for extra support as it probes the bark with its long decurved bill, looking for insects while house sparrows greet everyone at the entrance of the library.
Each of these birds symbolizes different things to me. Some have cultural significance in my life while
I associate others with different places and events. By birding, I find a way to relate to this foreign culture:
Through these common creatures, I find beauty in our cultural differences. The strange yet wonderful culture of birders and birding is fascinating, but also grounded in a curiosity and passion with the natural world to which I can easily relate.
The raven is the national bird of my country, Bhutan. It is highly revered. The crowns of all the kings of Bhutan have thus far been adorned with the raven; the crown is also referred to as the Raven Crown. Originally designed for the father of the first king of Bhutan, it is believed that he wore it throughout the civil wars, as well as the war against the British during colonization, emerging undefeated.
His son later unified the small factions to form the kingdom of Bhutan. Thus, the country crowned its first king in 1907 with the Raven Crown, inducting the raven as a symbol of power and authority in my country.
Having this romanticized image of ravens, it never fails to disappoint me when I see the same creature from the king’s crown now hovering over garbage. Even as I write this essay, I see through my bedroom window a couple of ravens circling over a dumpster.
This seems in stark contrast to impressive accounts of their intelligence in books like the
‘The Mind of the Raven’ by Bernd Heinrich, which help keep my fantasies alive by overshadowing my disappointment of seeing them with trash. Not only
are ravens intelligent, but belong to a family of intelligent family of birds called the Corvidae, which include jays, crows, magpies, and Clark’s nutcracker, all of whom are seen in different parts of Laramie.
Last summer, I was involved in a research project monitoring songbird nests, where willows where the dominating species at the research location.
I had to be there by 6:00 a.m daily; I then walked through endless willow shrubs, swamps and tall grasses, making every critter with wings angry. This made finding their nests much easier, as birds are territorial during nesting season. Amid the thick and tall shrubs, we located nests in the willows, marking them with small thumbtacks. Small thumbtacks in a willow bush! It was frustrating because I had to relocate the nests every second or third day to see if they were still there. Finding a thumbtack in a willow bush is the embodiment of looking for a needle in the haystack, even with the help of map and GPS.
The only consolation was that the thumbtacks were colored.
For my own sanity, I needed to learn the reasoning behind using thumbtacks. It was then that I learned about the intelligence of corvids. My supervisor explained the history: When they had first begun the research, they had used red flags, which were easily visible from a long distance. This not only proved an easy nest giveaway for researchers, but also for corvids. When researchers went back to relocate a nest, most of the nests had been preyed upon by ravens or magpies. Apparently, the corvids
learned to associate the red flags with food— the eggs or the hatchlings in the nest. I was impressed.
This made me grateful for the thumbtacks and their inconspicuousness. Birders and the weird little things they come up with to protect the creatures they care about gave me newfound respect for birding.
The birders I have met so far are a passionate group of people. They never fail to intimidate and awe me with their ability to name a bird even before they see it, just by listening to its calls. Birders tend to be in their birding spots at first light, and they’ll go birding anywhere on the globe in any kind of weather— trying to spot a particular species of gull among thousands on an icy cold winter morning is a very normal activity for them. They are often peacefully enjoying their mornings with binoculars, trying to focus on ducks or geese or some other birds., relishing the loud honks and cackles of Canada geese announcing their arrival or departure in “V”-shaped flocks.
Prexy’s Pasture is a good spot to see different birds. I have heard the nasal “yank-yank” of the red breasted nuthatch, the “chickadee-dee-dee” of the chickadees, and other calls and songs as I walk past the conifers bordering Prexy’s Pasture. The great horned owl’s call remains the most haunting. Every time I hear one call “hoo-h’hoo--hoo-hoo” as I walk past the conifer tree housing its nest, I shudder instinctively. I have to remind myself that the hoot is their means of communication, instead of some ominous message for me.
Bhutanese culture attributes the hooting of an owl as a harbinger of death. Owls are alternately known as ‘tegyen wookpa’— directly translated as
“evil owls.” I can’t recall learning about how and when the myth originated, but due to Bhutan’s strong oral tradition, people still believe its implications. A year ago, when I saw my first great horned owl in a nest, I was awed. I worried some hardship or tragedy might befall me or my family, and I waited…….but nothing happened. The fear dissipated after a couple of weeks when I learned that everyone at home was doing well.
Was that the appropriate amount of time to wait? Or am I supposed to wait until some coincidental death occurs in the family, to confirm and perpetuate the myth? I have no answers to these questions, because I was taught to believe in my elders without questioning them. I can’t say I have overcome my fear of owls as harbingers of misfortune, but I have certainly learned to look beyond the myth and appreciate them for the amazing creatures they are. This incident helped me enjoy my first saw-whet owl sighting.
I was stomping in the thick willow bushes at the base of the Tetons, looking for songbird nests. A willow shrub, unlike a tree, has multiple stems arising independently from the root. As a result, walking between adjacent willows became taxing, as stems and branches smacked every conceivable part of my body. Walking among the willows in a moist area was even worse. The wet ground sank beneath my rubber boots, making the willows even taller, and making me slightly claustrophobic. In the midst of all this, the
Art by Gabrielle Reeves Cartography by Ben Pease
Motorola walkie-talkie clipped on the chest strap of my backpack cackled as my team leader tried to get hold of me. She told me someone in the group saw two saw whet owls.
With newfound energy, I walked toward the place where the owl was sighted. Everyone had a big smile plastered on his or her face; some were taking pictures, some whispering that it was their first (“Lifer!”), while seasoned birders discussed the birds’
habitat. In short— it was a total bird-nerd haven (a phrase my roommate uses to describe enthusiastic birders). I joined the group.
It was a small owl with white eyebrows, white streaks on the forehead, reddish-brown streaks on the belly, and a black bill. It was perched on a willow branch with its eyes half-closed, trying to stay still and look tame. I wanted to yell, “I saw my first saw- whet owl!!!” Of course, yelling in the field would have earned me scorn from other birders for disturbing the owls.
Unlike the owls and ravens, falcons and falconry made me contemplate my religion, which has always been a priority in my life. Falconry was completely new to me until I visited the Teton Raptor Center. But, it was a falconer who came to the
Berry Center, here in Laramie, to talk about falconry, who inspired me to think about this practice from a Buddhist perspective. He described falconry as an art requiring a lot of patience, commitment, endurance, and knowledge about the biology and behavior of the bird. Falconers usually train birds like hawks, eagles,
owls, and falcons to hunt game animals.
Buddhism does not believe in killing, and hunters have always been depicted as evil sinners.
Every mural and painting on the walls of temples and monasteries in Bhutan depict sinners as being in hell. It made me wonder if the falconer is a sinner for letting his falcon hunt. Is the falcon a sinner because it hunts? Is there even a sinner in this case— would it be the bird or the falconer? My brain tries to reason this out logically. The falcon is designed by Mother Nature to hunt and kill a prey. The falconer is just letting the bird do what nature has designed it to do. Not letting the bird hunt would be a sin, wouldn’t it? As I ponder who the sinner is, I wonder, am I the sinner for second guessing my religion?
As I map my birding experiences, I realize that it has broadened the geography of my perspective on several things in my life. The cultural birding map that I worked to create has guided me when I was lost in the mountains of Jackson Hole, and helped me find myself again in the plains of the Laramie valley.
Artist Response by Elizabeth Cochran
