14 Things about Valentine’s Day, No. 5: How the Birds Observe Valentine’s Day

Vintage Valentine image from Thrifty Images on Etsy

It is hard to imagine how, when the snow is so deep as it is this year, and the air is so cold, birds could possibly be engaging in springlike mating behavior. Yet it is this premise that is the basis for Chaucer’s poem The Parlement of Foules, whereby the birds gather in a grand assembly on St. Valentine’s Day to pair up, and so, by poetic extension, should humans.

Other Valentine-themed literature and imagery make the same connection, and so one might naturally ask, just how fanciful is this idea? Or was it perhaps first proposed in some mild southern latitude where spring really does begin in mid-February?

But in fact, even up here in the frigid north, birds do start their pairing behavior around Valentine’s Day, apparent to the observing ear (if you dare go outdoors without your ear muffs) by the increase in bird song. Chickadees and cardinals begin whistling, nuthatches voice their nasal-sounding nih-nih, and woodpeckers start hammering away their territorial drum beats. All of those sounds are the birds calling for mates, and they start their amorous chatter around the middle of February.

“These are all winter birds,” said Massachusetts birder and author John Hanson Mitchell to National Geographic News. “It’s still winter, but the light, the changing light, has a hormonal trigger, and that starts the birdsong.”

Mitchell is the author of  A Field Guide to Your Own Back Yard. He says the singing begins with the birds that never migrated, which is why he calls them “winter birds.”

The singing is triggered by photoreceptors at the bases of the birds’ brains that respond to the diminishing period of darkness. So, for example, here on the 45th parallel, by Valentine’s Day we are getting about an hour and 20 minutes more sunlight than we were at the winter solstice.

And that just might be enough sunshine to make anyone want to sing.

Wrenifications

The wren first appeared in our backyard a couple of weeks ago, announcing his presence with what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes as a “rush-and-jumble song.” I was delighted to see him checking out the small bird house near the patio, then became alarmed when he headed over to the slightly larger one by the kitchen garden, because I thought the chickadees were still using it.

Wrens are known to be real estate hogs, stuffing many houses with twigs to form “dummy nests” so that other birds can’t use them; they sometimes go even further than that and actively eliminate the competiton. According to Cornell, wrens are sometimes the main reason for nest failure of bluebirds and chickadees, as well as some other species, which is why many birders don’t like them. So I was worried that the little fellow was going to do harm to the chickadee chicks.

I scurried over to shoo him away, saying, “You get away from there! That’s the chickadee house! You use the other house!”

“You’re talking to a bird,” said my husband from his seat on the patio.

The wren scuttled onto a perch in our neighbor Sue’s lilac bush, and I noticed that she had a bird house next to her garage also. Aha!  No wonder our yard is a magnet for the little speculator.

I didn’t hear any peeps coming from the chickadee house, so I decided to inspect it to see if the chicks were okay (a well-designed bird house will be easy to open so you can keep an eye on its inhabitants). What I found was a clearly abandoned nest. I then remembered seeing chickadees in the lilacs about a week ago, fluttering their wings like fledglings, but as they looked identical to the adults (not scruffy like robins) and I did not see them on the ground, I hadn’t put two and two together.

So I apologized to the wren, and he was soon happily stuffing twigs into both of our bird houses and, I suspect, Sue’s as well.

“In spring, the male establishes a small breeding territory by singing from exposed perches and putting stick foundations in prospective nest holes,” wrote Donald and Lillian Stokes in their Field Guide to Birds.

After several days of this, there was suddenly a noticeable absense of the wren’s musical bravado in the morning. Had his mate selected some other house down the block? If so, I was indeed sorry. They may be bad birds, but they’re voracious insectivores, and as a gardener first and bird watcher by extension, I would dearly love to have a family of wrens on pest patrol in my garden.

Then one morning I heard not only his by-now familiar burbling call, but a whole lot of chittering. I looked out the window to see two wrens engaged in a lively discussion as one perched on a nearby branch while the other went in and out of each of the houses.

It was fun to see this “songful tour of inspection,” as described by Christopher Leahy in The Birdwatcher’s Companion, after which the female chooses a nest and finishes it. And she’s a clever bird in setting up housekeeping, for she is known to stash a few spider egg sacs in the nest so that the spiders will devour any parasites that may infest the chicks, say the folks at Cornell.

I’m having a hard time telling which house she chose, as they appear to be dallying about both houses still. They are very active little birds, and the sexes look alike, so I find myself wondering if there is, indeed, only one female. According to Leahy, the name wren, which comes from the Anglo Saxons, has a traditional second meaning of one who is lascivious, possibly because of the polygamy of male wrens.

Counting Crows—and Wrens and Chickadees and More

Cooper's hawk (drawings by Sharon Parker)

Today begins the 113th Annual Christmas Bird Count, a comprehensive bird census conducted by fans of birds all over North America and coordinated by the National Audubon Society.

With tens of thousands of birding enthusiasts tallying up millions of birds, the count provides useful bird information to scientists, allowing them to track the distribution of birds in winter and bird population trends, which in turn can be indicators of threats not only to birds but to the environment in general.

But it wasn't really started as a citizen scientist project. Rather, American ornithologist Frank Chapman introduced the idea in 1900 as an alternative to the then-common tradition of the Christmas Side Hunt, in which gangs of hunters joyfully went forth on Christmas Day to slaughter as many small critters, both feathered and furry, as they could. The game was to see which party could count the highest number of little carcasses after the hunt.

Black-capped chickadee

The origin of that tradition may stem from the custom of hunting the wren on the day after Christmas in parts of the British Isles.

Chapman suggested that people skip the hunting part and just go straight to counting instead. Twenty-six others joined him on that first Christmas Bird Census—in Toronto, Ontario, and Pacific Grove, California, along with several cities in Northeastern North America. The number of participants has grown tremendously ever since.

Chapman was an officer in the recently formed Audubon Society, and he was among the scientists and amateurs in the fledgling conservation movement who were concerned about declining bird populations in North America.

The count continues through January 5 and anyone can participate. The Audubon Society website has all the details for those who would like to head out into the snowy field to count birds alongside fellow (peaceful) avian enthusiasts.

Don't look in pear trees for partridges to count, though. You won't find them there; they don't like to perch in trees.

Wild turkey

Sharon and Craig Plant a Tree

I had begun this with a lead about how we have a custom of planting at least one tree at each house where we have lived since we bought our first house together in 1987, but it got to be too long, so I am saving that story for future zine. I like to draw trees, anyway, so I will look forward to crafting that one.

For this, I will just tell you about the tree we planted on Tuesday (which turns out to be kind of long anyway). We wanted a small tree to shade the patio but not the flower gardens in the backyard, and to avoid interfering with the power lines that reach diagonally across the yard, as well. After considering the various small trees that would be suitable for this site, I settled upon the ornamental crabapple Prairie Fire for its many fine qualities, especially disease resistance, since many of the crabapple trees around here were losing their leaves prematurely this summer due to something or other. My neighbor kindly pointed this out to me when I mentioned that we wanted to plant an ornamental crab, and since I really didn't know what was afflicting the other trees, I looked for one with resistance to as many diseases as possible.

But I also wanted a tree with a spreading, rounded form (the traditional apple-tree shape), that got to be about 20-25 feet high and wide, and had small persistent fruit that the birds could enjoy but that wouldn't drop in the yard and on the patio. I found a handy chart in an article offered by the University of Colorado Extension Service, and from that selected Prairie Fire.

The view from the home office window, where I'm writing this blog post

Our venerable local institution, Bachman's garden center, has always had a place in my heart because my grandmother loved Bachman's and was a loyal customer. For most things, I will go to our local independent garden center, Mother Earth Gardens; but for trees and sometimes shrubs, I like to go to Bachman's. And wouldn't you know they had a tree sale going on, which included free delivery. So, after calling to make sure they had the tree I wanted in stock, off I went to select a handsomely formed specimen and arrange delivery.

I think I mentioned that one of the reasons I like the flowering crab is because birds enjoy the fruit, especially in winter when other foods are scarce. Well, a similarly named crab (prairie something-or-other), is noted for its sterile flowers; it doesn't form fruit. I remarked, while my salesperson was writing up my order, that I thought a crabapple tree with no crabapples seemed kind of pointless to me, and another employee said it was to avoid the mess, especially from all the birds that eat the fruit and leave their droppings behind. So, apparently some people dislike the very bird-attracting qualities that's always one of the factors I consider when selecting a tree or shrub. Who cares if the birds poop on the patio? I have a hose and I'm not afraid to use it!

Future patio shade

The tree came on Tuesday, which was an especially blustery day. Craig was working at home, nursing a cold, and I headed off to an appointment and some errands shortly after the tree was placed in our backyard by a nice man driving Bachman's iconic purple delivery van. As I was heading out to the garage, the tree in its large pot was knocked over by the wind and I figured I may as well leave it lying on the ground, rather than set it up to be knocked over again.

When I got home in the afternoon, it was propped up at an angle, leaning against a bench. Craig reported that he had set it back up several times and was just trying to keep it from lying on the ground, possibly breaking some of the branches. We agreed that we really should plant the tree soon, so it wouldn't get knocked over anymore.

We proceeded to do so right after supper, but this time of year it gets dark quickly, which is why I don't have any photos of the tree planting in progress. The ground was so dry and hard from the long stretch of dry weather we've had since the middle of summer (after a summer that started out with much flooding!), that it took extra effort and lots of water to soften the ground enough to dig a decent hole. Then we discovered we had dug a little too deep and had to backfill a bit (planting a tree too deep dooms it to failure).

When we finally got it planted it was quite dark out. I set the sprinkler on low for a couple of hours to soak the ground all around the root zone.

The wind howled that night, but our newly planted tree just swayed and shook its branches, proving itself a tough little tree and seeming to be happy to have its roots underground at last. We'll get a load of woodchips soon to spread around the base, as well.

I turned on the sprinkler today again, since our recent rains have been rather scant, and soon after I sat down to write this, I heard a bit of commotion coming from the backyard. I looked out the window, and there, frolicking in the sprinkler and perched in the branches of our newly planted tree, were about a dozen sparrows, a couple of house finches, a goldfinch, and a cardinal!

On Saints and Birds and the Commercialization of Holidays such as Valentine's Day

In today's Minneapolis Star Tribune, artist Larry Hanson illustrates a quote about St. Valentine, from Episcopal priest Howard B. Harper, which says, "Poor old Valentine, a third-century priest, who was clubbed and beheaded on February 14th, in the year 270, would certainly be surprised to find himself a lovers' saint." And on the always-entertaining blog of Cul-de-Sac comic creator Richard Thompson on Friday, we have "A History of Valentine's Day Cards, Again," with the assertion that "every word of it is true," in which he illustrates the oft-repeated myths that (a) Valentine's Day is really just a re-creation of the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia, and that (b) St. Valentine  was arrested and eventually martyred for performing illegal marriages (banned during the reign of the emperor Claudius because it hampered his military recruiting efforts), and that he corresponded with his jail-keeper's daughter, signing the letters, "Your Valentine." (The image at right is from one of many sites that purports to relate the "true" story of St. Valentine.)

I love both Larry Hanson's regular "You Don't Say" illustrated quote and Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac comic. But while both are claiming to be presenting some truth about Valentine's Day that is little known, they are really only repeating what others have said, without question.

We all do that, of course, me included. When we learn something that sounds new to us that also happens to confirm our worldview, we are eager to embrace this new "truth" and even disseminate it to enlighten our friends and acquaintances. And while this sort of repetition of perceived fact without investigation has been going on for ages before the Internet was invented, the easy access to everyone's learned opinion makes the Internet an especially prodigious rumor mill. Which is sometimes fun, but also has the effect of helping myths to spread even more quickly and widely than they did when we got most of our information from the much slower but often just as misinformed print media of various kinds.

As Charlotte said to Wilbur in E.B. White's classic children's story, Charlotte's Web, "People will believe anything they read in print." Had he written the book today, surely he would have happily punned, "People will believe anything they read on the web."

For some reason I can't exactly explain, I have been obsessively curious about the history of holidays of late. I read The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum earlier this winter, which led me to read part of The Invention of Tradition, a collection of scholarly articles edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Soon a kind of intellectual domino effect was triggered in my mind, and I found myself hunting down articles in  scholarly journals, which I found I could access online after logging in to the Hennepin County Library website and following the research page to the databases link. It was an exhilarating discovery: A person can do real research online instead of relying on Google, which tends to lead you into an endless loop of sources quoting each other and often all leading back eventually to Wikipedia.

Without delving any deeper into explaining the processes of my particular strain of geekiness, and with the advisory that I am still researching this and looking forward to putting together a zine or something on the topic of various holidays (And dubious saints! Maybe trading cards!), I thought I ought to take a moment to share some of what I've learned so far. I'll apologize for not citing more sources at this time (I've dropped in a few links, even so), but it's nearly midnight and I thought I ought to post something about Valentine's Day while the topic is still timely.

Herewith, a few things I've learned about Valentine's Day, which probably don't confirm anybody's worldview, unless you are an avowed skeptic of everything you've been told so far:

Lupercalia, which was celebrated by the Romans on Feb. 15 or thereabouts, was a patriotic holiday, a kind of founders' day, if you will. The etymological root of Lupercalia is lupus, Latin for wolf, referring to the wolf mother who raised Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. If Valentine's Day were a reinvention of Lupercalia, surely we'd be setting off fireworks and waving Roman flags, not eating chocolates and sending cute love-themed greetings.

Valentine was a popular name amongst Romans. The name shares the same root as the word valor. It meant a brave, strong person. Who wouldn't want a name like that? Of course there were lots of people named Valentine. And of course some of them would have been Christians and some of them priests, and it's entirely possible that some of them would have been martyred for their faith. Persecuting Christians (and Jews, btw) was what many Roman emperors did. (But not all of them, and it appears unlikely that it was a predilection of the emperor Claudius who was in charge during the years in question—there also appears to be no record of any marriage ban during his short reign, from 268 to 270 A.D.). The early martyrologies had, in fact, identified at least two saints named Valentine who were both said to have been martyred on Feb. 14, in 268 or 269 or 270 A.D. But in the mid-20th century, the Catholic church concluded that the evidence about Saint Valentine, whether there were two or just one of him, was dubious enough to remove his feast day from any official observance. In other words, the church isn't sure of any historical facts about the saint.

The first recorded association that scholars have been able to find of Valentine's day with love and romance—and birds, incidentally—was when, in about 1383, Chaucer published his fanciful story poem The Parlement of Fowls, in which he describes an imaginary gathering of birds choosing their mates. Scholars think that he may have been connecting certain phenological observations—birds begin singing again around mid-February (I heard some especially bubbly house finches just yesterday), and the earliest signs of spring begin to manifest about this time—with the saint's day that falls at a convenient point in the natural year.

This association of Saint Valentine's feast day with courtship really caught on amongst the aristocracy in the 15th century, because it fit in so handily with the courtly love traditions already established there, and was a welcome diversion in late winter, before things got really busy in the spring (this was still an agrarian economy, remember).

The peasant classes appreciated a little late winter fun, too, and young unmarried people celebrated the day by pairing up as couples and going carousing in the taverns in groups. It appears that this folk custom was more about partying than about getting serious about romance, however. In a preindustrial agrarian economy, there's a certain amount of downtime that would be coming to an end real soon about this time of year, so why not party while you can?

Valentine's Day was largely unheard of in America until about the 1840s, right around the time people started getting into celebrating Christmas (coincidence?). A great deal of marketing by American businesses had something to do with it. What? You thought the crass commercialization of holidays was a late-20th century invention? It wasn't all crass, though, people had fun with it, and many of the 19th-century valentine greetings were quite clever and often humorous. And from these early beginnings in America, children were included in the exchange—it wasn't just about adult romantic love, but also about parents' affection for their children, and children's friendships, too.

The Hallmark company has a collection of historic American valentines at its headquarters in Kansas City, as does the Hennepin History Museum. (The image above is from Indiana University.) I like to think of this fanciful correspondence as early examples of mail art, but that might just be me seeking to confirm my worldview. The mailing of valentines peaked around 1850, at which time the post offices were swamped with seasonal mail, much like they are now at Christmastime.

It appears that ever since Chaucer's time, the holiday has taken on many meanings, from birds singing and pairing up, to courtly romance and poetry, to more lighthearted gestures of love and affection. I suppose people over the years have made of it what they like, according to their preferences and, dare I say, worldviews. And isn't that really the best sort of holiday?

I hope you had a happy Valentine's Day, however you chose to mark the day.