Deborah Kent: BIRDS OF AMERICA

Deborah Kent is a shortlist winner nominee of the 2024 Adelaide Literary Award Contest in the category of Essays, with her work titled Birds of America.

Deborah Kent grew up in Little Falls, New Jersey, where she was the first blind student to attend the public school. She received a BA in English from Oberlin College and a Master’s in Social Work from Smith College School for Social Work. For five years she lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she wrote her first young-adult novel, Belonging. After publishing numerous novels and nonfiction titles for young readers she has branched into solo performance and writing personal essays. Her work has appeared in The McGuffin, Persimmon Tree, Damselfly, and several anthologies. She lives in Chicago with her husband, children’s book author R. Conrad (Dick) Stein.

BIRDS OF AMERICA

When I was six years old, Santa Claus brought me a present that changed my life. It was a set of records for teaching birdsong identification to beginners. I listened and listened. Pretty soon I knew the song of the robin, the Baltimore oriole, the catbird, and the brown thrasher. Over time I acquired more recordings, and my knowledge and curiosity grew through the years.

My mother was an avid amateur birder. The binoculars and the Peterson's Field Guide always rested on the counter by the back door. Maybe there were moments when Mom felt sad that her blind daughter would never share her delight in a warbler's bright plumage. But as in so much else, she drew upon her creative approach to life. I couldn't see the birds she loved, but I could know them by their calls and songs.

Little Falls, New Jersey, was still a small town when I was growing up. Suburban streets cut their way through patches of woods. On spring mornings Mom and I would set out, alert for the unexpected. "What's that?" I might whisper, pointing to a trill in the underbrush. "A northern parula?"

Mom peered through her binoculars. "I think so," she whispered back. "Yellow throat, white bands on the wings."

Back home Mom lifted Birds of America down from the bookcase. It was a massive tome with thin, crackling pages. Whenever we identified a new species, Mom would read its entry from Birds of America out loud. It was our ritual of discovery.

In eighth grade I enrolled in a new school and set out to make new friends. One morning, waiting outside before the bell, I announced, "Listen! There's an eastern towhee!"

"Huh?" somebody said. "An eastern who?"

I had made a grievous error. People wanted to hear about boys and parties and who was mad at who. Birds had nothing to do with the business of growing up.

In high school I wrote for the school paper and joined the Drama Club. But birds never disappeared from my life. When I stepped outside I mapped the landscape—English sparrows across the street, a cardinal to my left, blue jays arguing at the corner. If I heard a song that was new to me, I strained to listen through the human conversation around me. I memorized the pattern of chirps and trills so I could identify the song later, poring through my recordings at home.

Eventually I left Little Falls to start a family in Chicago. Back in New Jersey, subdivisions devoured the woods I remembered. It made me sad to know that houses stood where Mom and I used to take those early-morning walks.

There were no woods in my Chicago neighborhood, but this part of the city had plenty of grass and trees. In the spring migrating birds paused to rest in our yard, and I greeted them as old friends. A magnolia warbler! A white-crowned sparrow! And could it really be?—yes!—a great crested flycatcher!

One night I woke to the unmistakable quavering cry of an eastern screech owl. I knelt by the open window, feeling privileged to hear this wild, ancient call while the city slept.

After the spring migrants moved on, plenty of birds remained to keep me company. On any summer morning I'd step outside to a chorus of robins and cardinals, mourning doves and house finches. Toward sundown chimney swifts twittered in the sky, and later, as evening descended, I'd hear the sharp burring calls of nighthawks.

The nighthawks disappeared first. They didn't go gradually; they vanished from one year to the next. "Have you noticed we don't have nighthawks anymore?" I asked the neighbors. Nighthawks? they said. What are those?

Each year the gentle cooing of the mourning doves was woven into my summer days. Then, a few years ago, the doves fell silent. "Have you noticed we don't have mourning doves anymore?" I asked the neighbors. Mourning doves? they said. Gee, now that you mention it . . .

This year we lost the chimney swifts. Those chattering flocks, devouring their weight in mosquitoes every evening, have thinned and nearly disappeared. I didn't ask the neighbors whether they noticed.

I'm not the only one to note these losses, of course. All over the world people are fighting to ban poisons and protect vital habitat. I sign petitions, I donate. But the outcry seems feeble against the massive weight of indifference. Who will miss what they never noticed in the first place?

On the morning Mom died, I stepped onto her porch and heard the sweet song of a prothonotary warbler. Mom was gone, but I still had the gift that she gave me, beginning with those records when I was six years old. Birds of America, that heavy volume with the thin crackling pages, stands in an honored place in my own bookcase now.

Mom would miss the nighthawks, the mourning doves, and the chimney swifts. She would share my sadness, and she would worry with me about what we might lose next in this fragile, precious world.

Deborah Kent