The Bird Book

By Anna Schmeer

Every hour, a bird call can be heard echoing around my house, emanating out of a clock.

Not like a cuckoo clock where the birds jump out at you from inside intricately painted doors–I’m talking about an Audubon Society clock that has different birds for every hour, no numbers anywhere. And every hour, on the hour, a bird sings. It’s light sensitive, so it doesn’t go off at night, but I’ve heard every call countless times; I know them all by heart. I live and work by that stupid, annoying bird clock that interupts my FaceTime calls and has people wondering do I have a pet bird? Or… twelve?

As annoying as that bird clock may be, I love it. I’ve always had an affinity for birds. When I was little, about six or so, I was given a book full of bird information. I never actually bothered to learn the title of the book; in my family it is known as “The Bird Book.” It is separated into multiple sections based on where the birds live and not alphabetically–I love that organization. The depictions on every page are more than just an illustration; they’re art. But the real kicker is that it makes sounds. I was given a book of birds that made bird sounds. And every day, I played every sound. There wasn’t a day that went by where a Common Loon or a Great Horned Owl call wasn’t heard in our house (a loon makes a very eerie howl, and an owl, of course, hooooooots). It got to the point where my dad would take the batteries out of the book and stash them some out-of-the-way place so my bird book and I would stay quiet.

Of course, it was my parents’ fault I had that bird book in the first place, so they really had no right to complain. I wasn’t given this book for no reason, though. There is a bit more to the story. When my sisters and I were younger, my parents enrolled us in a music program called Kindermusik that met in the basement of the Church of the Resurrection. There, we learned about rhythm, lyricism, and all of the various instruments. We even learned to play a few! The teacher Miss Trilla would bring something in each day to demonstrate how we could find music everywhere. One day she brought in her cello, another day tin cans, and one day, she brought in a bird book. Out of all the odd trinkets and toys she brought, I was fascinated by this book. My mom was inspired by how much I adored the bird book and decided to get me one of my own because she knew how much I liked birds from the time we spent wandering parks and just being outdoors. I was in bird heaven. I was fascinated by all of the sounds and the beautiful drawings on every page. I spent hours pouring over this book, even though I didn’t understand any of the information written. I carefully turned each page, not wanting to rip it, pressing the sound guide on the side to change the track number, and looked at the pictures corresponding to the sound I was hearing. I would play with this for hours on end. Of course, I did normal kid things too. The bird book wasn’t my only toy.

My mom loved taking us to the Arboretum near to where we live. Juggling four small children is no easy task and giving them basically a wide-open field to run in is sometimes your best option. Before the children’s area at the arboretum was renovated, we would play in the fake “farmers market” stand that I was too short to see over (I would cry every time my sisters left me out of the bartering that was going on) or the corn maze that wasn’t really a maze and probably wasn’t corn, either. But the best part of going to the arboretum wasn’t any of these activities or the fat koi you could feed or the kids play area; it was the bird house. Tucked away in the woods, there is a teeny, tiny house–a shed, really–and it is placed in the perfect location for birdwatching. Small children, as you know, aren’t patient enough for birdwatching, so we never did. My brother, in particular, loved chasing the birds–it was his favorite pastime. My sisters and I would play Little House on the Prairie while walking through the trail and we would pretend that the bird house was our home and that we were taking our covered wagon to Oregon on the trail, one of us probably dying from dysentery every time. We did this for years. Every trip to the arboretum demanded a visit to the bird house.

As we got older, my brother stopped chasing birds. I graduated from Kindermusik in a loud ceremony of recorder playing and twenty children messily eating pineapple popsicles. We stopped playing covered wagons in the woods and started actually reading the information written on the posters around the arboretum. Around this time, I also started to comprehend the information about the hundred birds in my bird book. I became an encyclopedia of sorts, spouting off information about any bird we saw, heard, or read about at the arboretum. Don’t ask me about any of them now because I definitely couldn’t tell you.

Although I didn’t retain any of that information, I did keep that fascination for birds. This summer, I went to the Field Museum in Chicago, and I spent hours in the room with all of the taxidermied birds. I may have just gotten lost in the room itself (seriously, it was so big, I didn’t even make it all the way to the end), but I also got lost in the information. There was so much to be read and understood that at one point I reverted back to my childhood self and stopped reading the information altogether, just looking at the pretty birds and listening to the kids next to me press all of the buttons at the same time to hear the bird calls, which, honestly, I would have done, too. Recently, I went to the St. Louis Zoo, and my sister and I spent forever in the house where all of the birds are kept, just slowly making our way around. Walking around with my sister, watching the birds, made me realize how much I enjoyed the carefree aspect of childhood; staring at birds in my book and repeatedly pressing the buttons to hear their calls.

I still have the bird book, of course. I wouldn’t throw away such an important part of my childhood; I’m not a monster. The speakers are so worn down that the bird calls barely sound recognizable, but the pages are in good condition. Every once in a while, I flip through the book, stopping on all my favorite pages, and recalling how much has changed since the last time I looked through the book. And, like clockwork, the hourly bird call, whether it’s an American Goldfinch (po-ta-to-chip! po-ta-to-chip!) or a Yellow Warbler (sweet sweet sweet I’m so sweet!), will bring me back to the present, reminding me that time ticks on.