Part 1 of our “Staff Picks” series for National Book Blitz Month
We’re kicking off the year with a series on our favorite nature books. I chose The Backyard Bird Chronicles, by novelist Amy Tan. This gorgeous book features pages from Tan’s nature journal from 2017 through 2022, with a foreword by David Allen Sibley.
Amy Tan’s own illustrations accompany nearly every entry. Her sketches verge from cartoon-like to lush full-color portraits. It turns out that the novelist is skilled not only at spinning beloved tales like The Joy Luck Club, but also at capturing—in words and drawings—the birds that visit her back yard.
She describes her journey of learning to draw as logging “pencil miles.” Mentored by nature educator John Muir Laws and a teenaged naturalist named Fiona Gillogly, Tan brings her unique fiction-writer’s lens to the project.
Those who love Tan’s books will especially enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at the author’s writing life as it’s continually interrupted by the distraction of birds. Her Bay Area home offers multiple views of the action. That includes the bathroom window, where she can watch Anna’s Hummingbirds while brushing her teeth each morning.
As a beginner to the world of birding, Tan asks countless questions about what she’s seeing. Watching a food fight between species, she wonders what signals she’s missing in their body language. “Beyond the House Finch’s fixed stare and arched back, what are the other aggressive traits I’m not aware of? Do they raise feathers slightly, like a hissing cat?”
Her observations are minute, down to the number of toes used to grip a perch. Where others might simply see “brown bird” and move on, she delights in cataloguing the range of behaviors, colors, and choices of her feathered guests.
Tan doesn’t shy away from playful anthropomorphisms, such as when she’s categorizing the “specials” she puts out for the birds. “Spicy Suet: Just like Mom used to throw up for you. Includes Seeds, Insects, and Nasty Mealworms. Migratory Star Award.” “Nyger Nirvana. If you’re a busy finch and have no time to catch, order some of our GMO thistle. A crowd pleaser.”
Tan’s descriptive powers are a delight. California quail “rise like little helium balloons, the little flag on their crowns waving farewell.” The white feathers on the female’s belly remind Tan of coconut shavings from a distance, but through binoculars, she sees they are “laid out as precisely as interleaved pineapple skin.”
Elsewhere, she reflects on how experienced birders sometimes characterize Lesser Goldfinches as “trash” birds (because numerous) and House Sparrows as “junk” birds (because invasive). She finds their antipathy understandable but discomfiting: “The rhetoric is often the same as the racist ones I hear about Chinese people.”
Because she’s new to birding, Tan finds every bird fascinating and special, and through her eyes, so do we.
Shawndra Miller
Communications Director