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Amy Tan Talks About Birds: 'I Was Thrilled and Instantly Addicted'

In her new book, 'The Backyard Bird Chronicles,' the author of the 'Joy Luck Club' shares the joy of birdwatching

By Michele Wojciechowski

If you've ever thought about taking up birdwatching, but haven't made the time, Amy Tan's latest New York Times bestseller "The Backyard Bird Chronicles" might just change that.

A person sitting outside on a chair with binoculars and a notepad. Next Avenue, Amy Tan
Author Amy Tan  |  Credit: Courtesy Amy Tan

Both written and illustrated by Tan, 72, the book comes from a number of nature journals she kept while watching birds in her back yard. Although it may seem trite to say, her book literally made me both laugh and cry.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Next Avenue: What is it about birds that moves you so?

Amy Tan: Oh, they're so miraculous, and they are so delicate, but so strong, and smart and clever, and they've come all the way to my yard — many from three thousand miles to be there.

I see them as individuals and not species. I don't necessarily know each one, personally, but when I see an individual, I watch it in the yard, and I get very attached to what it's doing, how it's clever, and what it does differently from others of its own species.

"When I see them, they give me a sense of peace because they are there."

They're not pets. I love that they are wild and are near me, that they will look at me and remain there. That is the 'Dr. Doolittle effect,' where they are seemingly in your environment and consider you just part of it, not a friend, but perhaps a food source, or perhaps a featherless creature who's not going to go after them like a predator.

I thought it was funny when you wrote 'Do they see me as this featherless creature who gives them food?'

When I see them, they give me a sense of peace because they are there. I immediately get a hit of dopamine — that pleasure center is ignited. This is what life is about. This is beauty. This is miracles. This is the diversity of nature, in all its glory.

The Creation of the Book

It's a really nice book. The pages are gorgeous; they don't make books like this much anymore. Did you have any input on the final product?

My editor was the one who pushed for this book from me. I didn't think it was a book. Then he really pushed for it to be flexibound so that it would be like a guidebook, which I love.

The original pages were a mess, and they had a senior art production person and their designer take that big mess and design it in a way so that it looks very tidy and as though it was always meant to be in that particular size. If you had seen the original, some of these things are on 11x17 paper. Some of it is on 8x11. Some of it is on 7x10. Some of them are loose pages. Some of them are in journals.

So the fact that they made it look both coherent and compatible, in every which way, is a miracle. Did you see the end paper, with the wallpaper of the birds?

Yes!

And the cover, if you take the jacket off, you'll see my name and a little hummingbird.

Before you started keeping a nature journal, were you a big birdwatcher?

No, not at all.

Why did you start?

I was learning how to nature journal. I would go on field trips to do nature journaling, but I don't drive, and so I would depend on my husband to take me to these places. He was a good sport about it but I felt bad because watching people draw is not the best thing that he could choose to do on a weekend.

Then I realized I could just nature journal in my yard. I had trees, flowers and succulents, and I had birds. I started to notice them — first, three of them. After a while, I noticed more of them and I realized I had a very birdy yard.

I was so excited. Because if you look at birds from a distance and you don't pay attention, they're all little brown birds. There's nothing distinctive about them from the distance.

But if you pay attention and use binoculars, you realize they're all different. I was thrilled and then instantly addicted.

Choosing a Favorite Bird

I'm into the behavior of individual birds. That's what separates me from those who would call themselves expert birders. I'm not an expert. I don't care about my life list. I care about my backyard list. It's so peaceful, just sitting there watching them.

In the beginning of this book, you say that your favorite bird is Anna's hummingbird. But many years have passed since you initially wrote that. Is it still your favorite bird or do you have many favorites?

"After a while, I noticed more of them and I realized I had a very birdy yard."

You know, it changes. I think it's the season and it's my knowledge of birds. I still love the Anna's hummingbird. I love them all. There's not a single bird that I dislike. I love pigeons. I love anything, the common birds. They're all wonderful.

For a while, it was the great horned owl, in part because they are especially magical. You see this gigantic bird in your tree and it looks at you with those large eyes that seem imperturbable and kind of godlike. So, I love that. Plus, they got rid of all the rats we had. We had tons of rats in my yard.

The other thing is that for about eight months, [the owl] was a completely reliable bird. Every time I looked out the window, there were two of them. Then they went away, as we expected they would, to go nest with a partner. But then the male would bring back his girlfriend for a while, and then they had to leave to go nest.

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My latest favorite bird is a wrentit, and it's my favorite because that is a bird you never see. It is hiding inside the coyote bush, up in the headlands, in chaparral and scrub. [Tan lives in Sausalito, California]. There are two of them. They pair up very early and they look prehistoric.

"My latest favorite bird is a wrentit, and it's my favorite because that is a bird you never see."

They're not related to any bird in the United States. They're only found in Oregon, California and Baja, on the coast. It's reclusive. You'll never see it but you'll hear it all the time. It will not go to the feeder or not come out of the bush, and then I see it just walking along the planters, bathing itself, checking out a feeder, looking at the top of the feeder to see what's up there.

It is neither a wren, nor is it a tit. It is related to something thousands of years ago in Asia and lives for 12 years. It's got these weird little eyes that are pale with a black dot in them.

I love all those facts about this bird: misnamed, rare, thousands of years ago, related to a bird in Asia, somehow came over the Bering Strait. My ancestors came over the Bering Strait. It just makes me love this bird.

Oh, and the fact that it never strays more than 500 yards from its natal home, meaning this is a bird that's going to stay here.

A Collection of Nature Journals

So 'The Backyard Bird Chronicles' comes from the eight nature journals you've created.

Oh, I probably have 20 of them now.

How did you narrow [everything] down to what's included in this book?

First, I asked my editor to choose his favorites. And he chose them on the basis of color. So, I thought — I'm not going to use his criteria. I ended up going back and decided I needed some from all the different seasons so that I could see different behaviors, fledgling behavior, which only occurs in certain periods, for courtship or migration.

Also by variety of birds, and what I thought was interesting about what I had observed with that bird, at that time,and anything unusual. So, that became the basis of what I chose.

"One of the lovely things about doing a nature journal was that it was completely for me, not for anybody else."

Do you bird watch every day?

Right now, I'm looking at a pair of chickadees and a junco eating off the feeder to my left by a window that's about eight feet away.

Do you birdwatch for any specific amount of time?

I always think it's 15 minutes, and then about 10 hours have gone by. It's hard to just bird for a short period of time but I do. I have to work. I have gone back to writing my novel. I was on a book tour.

I have moved back to my true office instead of the dining room, where I would see many, many birds, but I have bird feeders everywhere. Even in my office, there are four feeders right outside and a water bowl.

Would you ever do 'The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Part 2'?

I'm not planning on it, although I keep journaling these birds. The problem with doing something like that is then I would be conscious that this is going to be published. One of the lovely things about doing a nature journal was that it was completely for me, not for anybody else.

Book cover of The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. Next Avenue

I could be as silly as I wanted to be. I could be wrong about my guesses. I wasn't trying to be scientific. But I wanted to learn as much as possible at the same time. So I took it seriously.

If I'm aware that somebody's going to read this, I would want to make all my sketches really nice.

I wouldn't want to have smudges. I wouldn't want to have misspellings. I wouldn't spill coffee on my pages. I would use a uniform-size page, and then I would feel that I had less freedom in what I was doing. So, I'm not planning on that kind of misery in doing my nature journaling. I want to make it private again.

I want to not have self-consciousness, which is a problem that I have with writing my novels. In the first one, I did not think it was going to be published. Then when it was published, I thought, well, just a few thousand people will read it and they'll forget about it.

Once I got published, writing became a very different endeavor for me. [Tan's first book was "The Joy Luck Club," which has sold about 20 million copies and been translated into 25 languages.]

Surprising Insights About Birds

What are some of the coolest or most surprising things that you learned about birds and their world from watching them?

One is that people are always noting that corvids are very smart: crows, ravens, Caledonian crows and scrub jays. It's as if the other birds are not quite as smart, that they don't have human analogs like speaking or following directions.

But I think that we are so prejudiced about how we look at animal intelligence and matching it to what we think about as intelligence — the ability to use language, human language. What I see are birds that are using their own skills. They problem solve and they also communicate in a certain way.

What people don't see, for example, is the slight quiver on the top of the crown that means something to a bird that has the ability to see that. We don't see that unless we put it in slow motion. I started to notice how many things that they were communicating not just to each other, but to me.

There's a story in the book about an ordinary female house finch that was flying back and forth in front of the window, and most people would look at that in two seconds and say it sees its reflection, and it's territorial.

"When the little birds outsmart the big birds and get what the big birds were eating, I think, oh, how clever you are, and I talk to them."

It's not territorial; it's looking at me. It's flying back and forth, and then it goes over to a certain place where it feeds, and it comes back to me. I realized, finally, that the seed feeder there is its favorite. I went outside, filled that feeder, and then that female house finch went right to the feeder and ate, and then she left.

I cannot guarantee that that's what happened; I really, truly feel it was trying to get my attention.

I have taken feeders down. The birds will come to the window and follow me, and tap on the window, and look at me, and if I open the door, they fly right in. They definitely know the food is inside here somewhere, and that I bring the food. To me, that's a very smart thing for them to make that connection.

The other thing is the way they outsmart other birds to get food. That's intelligence built on survival.

I'm just so admiring of what they do. When the little birds outsmart the big birds and get what the big birds were eating, I think, oh, how clever you are, and I talk to them.

What's the best part of birdwatching?

It got me into working with a number of conservation groups such as the American Bird Conservancy and Point Blue. I also work with a rehab center called WildCare.

So, it made me much more serious about conservation by knowing what the threats were and how you address them. I'm learning exactly how this affects the environment, as well as the habitat, the life of birds and the survivability of birds. They are like the harbinger of what's going to happen. If you love the beauty of birds, you are concerned about protecting them.

There are so many parts of birdwatching that are so wonderful. It is that being in the moment. When I'm watching birds, I am in that moment. I'm not thinking about what I'm supposed to do, which is unfortunate when I have things to do.

I am just looking at individual birds and that's why the moment can last for hours. I'm not aware of time and I'm just completely transported into another world. And in this world, there's nothing about politics in there. There's none of the noise of the world. It is its own beauty.

Michele Wojciechowski
Michele Wojciechowski Michele "Wojo" Wojciechowski is an award-winning writer who lives in Baltimore, Md. She's the author of the humor book Next Time I Move, They'll Carry Me Out in a Box. Reach her at www.WojosWorld.com. Read More
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