Perhaps one shouldn’t write about the song of a bird. Certainly not a poem. The birdsong is enough.
And yet, I’m compelled to share my early morning experience, walking under the trees in the half-light before sunrise last spring under the dark shapes of maple, oak, and fir. I couldn’t see any birds but I heard them, above and on the sides. Different sounds, males calling females and birds claiming their territory. For a moment I was pulled into another world. A world bursting with joy and with life.
I had my phone with me and I photograph the sky as if to say, “I see you”. Then I recorded the birds singing, as if to say “I hear you.” There was a magic dialogue.
The phone then analyzed the sounds and gave me a report. The spell was broken. Technology should have no place in the contemplative experience, at least not for this eighty-two-year-old.
The Final Stretch 
Sorry it didn’t sit well with you. I actually enjoy sitting outside before sunup with my coffee, using an app to help myself learn to recognize bird songs. I never realized how many different vocalizations some species can make: threat calls, warning calls, begging calls, mating calls, gathering calls… such a wealth of experiences communicated in song. I feel I’m coming a little closer to appreciating the richness of their lives when I can “sort of” understand their conversations.
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Good point. If one pays attention, one can certainly discern different vocalizations and, over time, learn to understand what they mean. Then, of course, there’s the process of learning to identify birds only by their song. Walking in a nearby forest, technology enables me to identify the sound of birds in the trees even though I may not actually see them as was the case on a recent walk when I heard a scarlet tanager, a species I haven’t actually seen for several years.
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