I hate to admit it, but I’m constantly downloading apps. The joy and entertainment of a fun new game never seems to last long, but I keep downloading them anyway. During this time of quarantine, I’ve enjoyed the small amounts of delight that the ever-rotating games on my phone can bring me.
A few weeks ago (couldn’t tell you how many), I accidentally woke up around 5:30 am. I take my night owl lifestyle pretty seriously, so naturally my first idea was to get back to sleep as quickly as possible. I couldn’t fall back asleep though, because of all the singing birds.
I’ve lived in this house in suburban Virginia almost as long as I can remember; we moved in when I was about three. When I was growing up, before I spent all my time playing games on my phone, I spent all my time outside. I loved rocks and bugs and everything else. Each day, I used to check under all the gutters around my house for worms and toads. I had one favorite toad in particular, the biggest of the bunch, who I lovingly called “Toady.” I had a fort in my backyard, which was really just a collection of rocks and sticks that I had arranged around a clearing, and a few old plastic chairs. I liked to pick poke berries and mash them up, using the bright pink dye to paint my name on the trees. I had a small red photo album decorated with white hearts. In each page of the book I placed a different leaf from my backyard, and, I’m proud to admit, a few four leaf clovers.
All of this was, of course, a very long time ago, before smartphones and Netflix and college and Zoom and the coronavirus.
So, when I found myself in my childhood home in Virginia, hundreds of miles from my dorm at Duke, unable to sleep because too many birds were singing, I felt a tug. I listened more closely to the birds, and was brought back to my childhood days in the backyard, watching the toads and the worms and the ants go about their days. Having no background knowledge on birds, their habitats, or their songs, I really wanted to know what birds I was hearing. How was it, I wondered, that I had lived here my whole life, and had no idea what kind of birds lived around here?
Luckily, there was an app for that. Some early morning Googling produced Song Sleuth: Auto Bird Song ID. I downloaded it, and it did not disappoint. It’s a cool app that can identify bird songs by their species. You can record your song and let the app try to ID it, or you can listen to song recordings to try to match them to the birds outside. You can select your state and the time of year to bring up a list of the most likely birds. I didn’t try to record a song, but I was able to identify three different birds that morning by listening to the recordings. I heard an American Robin, a Carolina Wren, and a Tufted Titmouse. And I was delighted. I read the bios of each bird that the app provided, and learned about each bird’s migration patterns and the hallmarks of its song. I even listened to recordings of the same birds from around the country.
The app didn’t solve all my coronavirus related problems, but it did give me the opportunity to learn something about my surroundings and a chance to continue my childhood love for the natural world around me.
In this class we talk a lot about the end- predicted endings, endings that don’t come, and endings that do (but are they the end?). While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought an end to many things- concerts, the school year, and sports seasons, jobs, relationships, and plans- our class has chosen to look at the coronavirus not just as an end, but as a beginning, and as an opportunity for continuity.
While it doesn’t have to be Song Sleuth specifically, I recommend anything that can help you connect to your environment and your community, even if it’s not the one you’re usually living in, and embrace continuities over ends.
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