A Talk to the Students and Teachers of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education – Revised and Enlarged

The Lower? Species

Some Intimate Experiences with Birds

I think perhaps this is the first time I have not spoken of flowers but I would like to share with you today some of my intimate experiences with Nature and the joy she has brought me these many years. Although some of you have heard these stories, perhaps more than once, I hope they will prove to be new for others among you and fill your hearts with the wonders that I have been granted to see and participate in during a lifetime of intimacy with universal Nature.

Here are some memories of birds whom I’ve been blessed to know and, as there are many, I will not have time to speak of my life with flowers and animals, so if you are interested perhaps there can be another talk at a later time.

I’ll start with hummingbirds, the smallest of our feathered family, weighing only about 10 grams or 3/4 ounce approximately. The hummingbird moves its wings at such a tremendous speed that it actually produces a humming sound in the air. Its long needle-like beak and even longer tongue enable it to go deep inside flowers to reach the nectar there. There are many species of hummingbirds, but, unfortunately, none according to my daughter, Chali, are found in this part of the world. She had researched the subject for me when I wanted to bring hummingbird feeders to India.

Where I live, in Georgia, a state in the eastern the U.S. we have only one species but it is a beautiful one, the ruby-throated hummingbird. Its feathers are iridescent, greenish and purple, but when the sun strikes its throat the colour is that of a brilliant ruby. It is a unforgettable sight.

On the opposite coast, the west coast, in California, one can find many species and since along a good part of the California coast the weather is never too cold, hummingbirds can stay all year. Another reason why they love this area is the abundance of nectarous flowers, especially hibiscus. When I stayed at my uncle’s house in Santa Barbara one could watch dozens of hummingbirds fly from one flower to the next. In fact, they are so tame that they will fly when humans are around and not bother about them at all.

Now, my uncle was an experimenter of sorts, a tool and dye maker who always was interested in finding out about things. So one day he thought he would catch a hummingbird since they would feed just a few inches away from people. He grabbed the hummingbird as it was hovering over a flower and as he caught it the little creature spun around and ran its beak completely thorough his hand! He never tried that again!

Once when we were camping in Colorado, along a rushing river where many others had tents, we noticed that everyone had a hummingbird feeder outside the tent and there were probably more than 100 brilliantly coloured hummingbirds feeding at a time. The hummingbird has to eat the equivalent of its body weight every day or it will starve to death. Since hummingbirds are attracted to red, feeders are made to look like red flowers so the hummingbird goes directly to them. The formula is the simplest, four parts water to one part sugar and nothing else is required. Well, at the campsite I had a fishing rod learning against our tent. The fishing line had a red float and hummingbirds would come hour after hour and couldn’t figure out where the nectar was.

Now, for the story of my hummingbird friends in Georgia, the ruby-throats. My first visitor is a male, followed by a female and then others later in the year. People often ask me, “How can you be certain that these are the same hummingbirds. After all, they must have a brain that is much smaller than a pea.” And so I tell them how I am sure it is the same pair each year.

In Georgia we get freezes usually in late December and often very cold weather in January and February. My friend told me to be sure that I stopped feeding around the end of October as he had the unfortunate experience of keeping a feeder out too long and one morning a freeze came and he found the little hummingbird frozen. Once again I am better able to understand clearly Mother’s explanation of how these creatures lose their natural sense when they come in contact with man.

Why do I say that I know the hummingbirds who come to my house are the same visitors each year? Well, the natural cycle for many birds is a very exhausting journey undertaken twice a year. In the late fall as the cold weather approaches the birds along the east coast of north America will fly to the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico where the tropical climate affords them sufficient food. Then, in the spring, they undertake the arduous journey back to the U.S., a trip across the ocean of almost 1500 miles. When we lived in Houston we would travel to a place called ‘High Island”, which was the first land the birds would see on their long and extremely tiring journey, especially if they had to fight headwinds. Bird lovers would gather in the early spring and wait for a phenomena called ‘fall out’ in which hundreds of birds would literally fall exhausted from the sky and land in trees and on the ground in this sanctuary of the Audubon Society. We have seen the most beautiful birds imaginable there, Indigo buntings, Painted buntings, Night jars, lovely thrushes, blue grosbeaks and others, many just resting on the ground looking for water and food which the volunteers placed all around the island. Now I have digressed once more and I really must tell you about my friends the hummingbirds. I take the feeders down at the end of October, wash them and put them in a storage room. The feeders are just bottles that hold about half a litre and at their base are red plastic receptacles in the form of flowers with a perch so the birds can sit and feed.

Now in early April my friend, the male hummingbird returns – to the exact place where I had the feeders five months earlier. He will hover at that spot and then turn when he sees me in the kitchen and fly to the kitchen window and look directly at me as if to say, “I’m here, where’s my food?”. Not only this, but if I should go outside without the feeder in my hand he will buzz around my head a bit impatiently in case I didn’t get the message earlier, and he will do it again and again as if to say, “Didn’t you see me at your window, I saw you. Get moving”. They are feisty little creatures at times. And when they buzz you or chase each other they sound like miniature jet planes diving at each other.

Well, I hurry to fill the feeders. I boil water, melt the sugar in the water, let it cool to room temperature and take it outside and set it up in the usual place. I have a small metal rod set into a stone which I leave in all winter so I just hang the feeder on it. Before I get in the house he is already at the feeder. And he is very territorial. As other hummingbirds come he has a look out perch on a hemlock tree and chases them away as they arrive. This means that I have to set up another feeder in the back yard for other hummingbirds!

The last thing to tell you about my friends is that they love to play in a fine shower of water, just as the sun-birds here, and if I take the hose out and set it on a spray setting a hummingbird will come and take a bath playing delightfully buzzing in and out of the spray. It is something so extraordinary, so beautiful a dance that one will keep the memory of it in the heart forever.

Well, you have heard all my hummingbird stories so I shall move on to my friend the hawk. Sometimes we get the huge red-tailed hawks that can fly away with a large rabbit or squirrel but more often we get the red-shouldered hawks which are somewhat smaller though still very impressive. A man who does computer repairs for me is also an expert on raptors and actually is making a film on hawks and owls and other birds of prey living in large cities such as Atlanta. One day, a young man who occasionally helps me in the garden was working on cleaning an area where there were leaves and compost. As he was working he found many worms in the leaf mould and compost. Suddenly a young hawk flew onto a nearby branch. This is something unheard of as hawks keep their distance from people. But I must tell you that the mortality rate of hawks in the first year, according to my friend, is 80%. This is extremely high. As people build homes and sprawling communities the natural habitat disappears and there is insufficient food for these magnificent creatures. Now, back to my story. Joey, my helper, looked at the hawk and being innately close to Nature has an affinity for all creatures. He selected a large worm and threw it to the hawk who immediately swooped down to eat it. He did this a number of times and then called me and Mary Helen. Even though there were three of us the hawk didn’t leave as he was starving. I called my friend that evening and he told me to purchase raw chicken legs and cut them up in small pieces and throw them to the hawk. He came up the next day but there was no hawk. However he left his huge professional camcorder with me and the following day I was able to film Mary Helen feeding pieces of chicken to our young hawk. If you have ever been close to a creature of this size and observed its regal poise and its fierce but absolutely controlled demeanour, it is a sight never to be forgotten. In time I could go out on our second floor deck and from a half mile or more in the sky our hawk would see me holding a piece of chicken leg and dive down from the skies, land on a nearby branch and I would throw the piece to him. What a sight. This imposing creature is about this high with a large wing span and a high piercing cry much like that of our kites in India.

I will move on to a story of Auroville and then, if time permits, tell you of my great love, Juliet the swan. In the early days of Auroville, an American lady, Clare, later known at Dietra, lived at Auroson’s. She has an amazing rapport with the birds and people from the villages would bring her wounded birds to nurse back to health. At any one time you could see large aviaries filled with great owls and other birds recovering from broken wings and other fractures. One time Dietra took me through her house, opened a closet door in her bathroom and a tiny owl started screeching at us because we had disturbed its sleep. She told it to go back to sleep and it tucked its head down as she closed the doors. Recovering birds flew freely about her garden and it was for me a taste of what the earth will one day be when the supreme harmony descends.

Although her kingdom of marvellous change within

Remained unspoken in her secret breast,

All that lived round her felt its magic’s charm:

The trees’ rustling voices told it to the winds,

Flowers spoke in ardent hues an unknown joy,

The birds’ carolling became a canticle,

The beasts forgot their strife and lived at ease.

Savitri Book 7 Canto 6

Now there was a Brahmani kite, the one with the white breast, that had been injured and she was nursing it back to health. As he gained strength and began to fly he made Auroville his home. His name was Akhnaten and he was known as Ank for short. At the Matrimandir Nursery we had a central kitchen to feed about twelve Aurovilians. We had written to Mother about the difficult food situation and She gave us permission to start a kitchen in the nursery with a greater emphasis on hygiene and nutrition. Occasionally we would take some of our food, especially a roll or piece of bread back to our homes. Then, before we were even aware of what had happened Ank would have flown silently behind us and snatched away the piece of bread without ever touching our hand. We would suddenly notice that our hand was empty and then often hear Ank’s high pitched laugh as he got away with the goods.

He was especially fond of the children’s gardening class that I held every Wednesday and would never miss attending. I had wonderful times with these little ones, from the age of 4 or 5 to 14, but that is a story for another time. Ank would come, right on time for the class and then fly from branch to branch as the children walked through the nursery, attentively watching whatever we were doing. Of course he also had a favourite game, especially with Chali, in which he would fly just over the heads of the children and snatch one of their hats or scarves and fly away with a raucous laugh.

One day I was at home eating a piece of cheese. I walked outside and there was Ank sitting on a trellis just outside the house. I offered him a piece and he happily grabbed it and sat in front of me and ate it. Thus began a ritual that lasted perhaps more than a year. About three times a week Ank would come to the house for his piece of cheese. But he didn’t just wait outside. I would open the doors (we had double doors about 1 1/2 metres wide) and he would dip his wings (which were more than 2 metres across) and fly into the house and perch on the top of the door and wait for his piece of cheese. This ritual delighted us and would give me an opportunity to talk to him and occasionally, not often, he would let me stroke his breast. These were moments that will live with me all my days. One day, after he had been coming to the Nursery for over a year we heard a tremendous screeching noise in the sky and looked up to see two tiny dots. The screeching continued as one of the dots descended and we saw that it was Ank. He came to the trellis outside the house and continued to scream and call and finally we saw the other dot slowly drop down from the sky. Ank had found a mate and he wanted to introduce her to us. Of course, being totally wild she was terrified but Ank kept calling to her and she finally landed on the trellis and perched beside him. He came into our house, had his piece of cheese and they both flew off together with a final high pitched goodbye. We never saw him again.

I did want to tell you about the bird feeder system I designed so that we could view birds directly out the bedroom and living room windows. I bought a 2” diameter galvanized iron pole twenty feet long and then attached a number of bars at the top so that many feeders could be hung on it at once. This has proven to be a fairly good system for it helps keep away squirrels, opossums and raccoons who can easily destroy costly feeders, especially suet feeders, as they rip them apart with their strong claws or bite through plastic as the squirrels often do. I have had very expensive feeders torn apart or chewed by raccoons and squirrels. We have hundreds and hundreds of birds a year, both migrants and permanent residents who build nests and raise their young in the garden. We have the brilliant red cardinals, titmice, chickadees, sparrows, robins, bluebirds, nuthatches, grosbeaks, warblers, wrens, blue jays, house finches, goldfinches, purple finches, buntings, thrushes, thrashers (the state bird of Georgia) a wide assortment of woodpeckers and many more. During the winter months many of them rely on me for their sole food source and the feeders are often emptied in less than two days. If I let them get too low the chickadees will scold me when I come outside and they won’t stop until I’ve filled them all. Not only that, they will sometimes fly onto a feeder while it is still swinging after just having been filled! Although the woodpeckers will eat sunflower seeds they really love the suet mix I make for them. I melt vegetable shortening and peanut butter and then add corn meal and cracked corn. As it hardens I put it into moulds that I then hang on my poles. It is quite a sight to see the large red-bellied woodpecker bring the young to the feeders for the first time. They want to teach the young ones, at this stage almost without colour, to eat for themselves but the youngsters want to be fed so they flap their wings rapidly and open their beaks and the father or mother will come again and again from the suet feeders with little pieces and so gently feed them.

I shall have to take another detour for a moment to tell you about the pileated woodpecker. Have any of you ever seen the ‘Woody Woodpecker” cartoons. Well, Woody was fashioned after the great pileated woodpecker, the largest of all woodpeckers measure nearly 1 1/2 feet tall. These fellows are truly hilarious. They will not come to a feeder but when the dogwood berries are ripe it is their time for a feast. They will fly all over the yard to the different dogwood trees and eat the ripe berries. The only problem is that they are so large and heavy that when they try to reach berries on the outer branches, especially when they are reaching for them while upside down, the branches start to sway and it is really a sight to see them hanging on a thin branch that is swaying rapidly up and down. The pileated woodpeckers also have a unique laugh, again copied by Woody Woodpecker. It is something like aha ha ha ha and as you just watch them you are splitting your sides with laughter. Oh, they are so large that they make sort of a splat when they land on a tree and when they start to bore a hole in a dead branch it sounds like a jack hammer tearing up a road!

So filling bird feeders can be quite a time-consuming task, especially when one has to feed the wild ducks that come up from the lake, I live on a large lake where wild geese, wood ducks and mallards come throughout the year. The wonderful story of my friendship with the mallard families began many years ago when a female and two males were born in one of the coves of the lake. I don’t remember the exact year that they befriended me, these wild and extraordinarily beautiful creatures with their many-coloured iridescent plumage, but this began a long relationship that continues unbroken today, many years later. I began buying 50 lb. sacks of cracked corn and kept them in a storeroom attached to our house. When I came outside the ducks, swimming hundreds of yards away, would see me and swim to the edge of the lake and waddle up the hill to greet me. They would gather about my feet honking and making all kinds of happy sounds as I filled their tray with food. Once I even petted one of them but it became very upset and flew off. I realized then that these totally wild creatures needed to have their space and it was more than enough of a blessing just to have them come and visit and therefore I never tried to touch them again. One year a female with seven babies heard about this fellow who gave free meals and she actually came up the hill with all her young ones trailing behind in a perfectly straight line. I had to buy a large feeder and put half a sack in at one time to feed all of them. And, do you know, the mother never took one drop of food until all the young ones were full. She would just stand aside talking to them as a mother will and then eat afterwards and they would all go down the hill. Now my original three ducks would still be coming and sometimes we almost had traffic jams. However, the three companions decided they could also fly back to the lake from my house and thus began one of the most beautiful experiences, to see them lift off in front of you and gracefully soar out into the lake.

One day just over a year ago the two males came without the female. After they had eaten I saw her struggling up the hill with what appeared to be a broken leg. Sometimes the snapping turtles in the lake (which can weigh up to 15 kilos) will catch a duck and drag it under for a feast. My friend must have just made an escape but the legs was badly injured. I called the veterinarian but he said the cost to repair her leg would be prohibitive and I should just let her die. But you know, she came every morning, obviously in great pain, and I talked to her as I fed her and gradually over the months she healed.

Another experience is that of the Great Blue Heron. This is a truly majestic bird who flies very low over the lake, gliding really, and has a favourite nesting spot in one cove. We would often see him fly to our side where he would wait in absolute stillness for a fish to come by and then in one lightning fast motion would catch it. He is blue grey with an enormous wing span and is a permanent resident of our lake community. One day, my friend, who is an avid fisherman went down to his dock and looked in the cove and there was the heron chocking to death. His long neck would contract as he would try to breathe. He was near to death as my friend picked him up and rushed him to the veterinarian. It seems he swallowed a fishing lure and it caught in his throat cutting off his breathing and preventing him from eating. My friend asked the veterinarian if anything could be done and was told that the bird would have to be cut all around its breast and the lure pulled out from inside. This was the only way to save him. Well, my friend asked the vet to be a bit lenient with his charges since this would be a very expensive operation. On cutting the heron open the vet found the lure and pulled it out without damaging any internal organs. He then stitched the breast together again when it came time to pay the bill the veterinarian said “There is no charge.” He is famous today in our area for saving the Great Blue Heron. My friend took the heron back to the lake. In two days he was flying again and we see him regularly soaring low across the water in a perfectly effortless motion!

I have to conclude my story of the ducks with this past year’s residents. They have increased from three to six and sometimes eleven. The word has certainly spread. Now when I go outside they often call in greeting from the other side of the lake. Often they swim over to my dock and I talk to them but if they are not hungry they just swim around happily. Then, later in the day they will come up for their meal but now I have to throw it to them as there is a rather strict hierarchy and the bolder ones pinch the feathers from the milder and gentler types so I have to be careful and throw the seed so that all get enough. I talk to them and they talk to me and among themselves and I feel such a divine blessing to have this contact.

I could go on and on about the lovely bluebirds that come to the same house each year to raise their young and fill the skies with flashes of gorgeous blue, the small green heron who patrols the edge of the lake each fall season, the sharp-shinned hawk who flew within an inch of our noses one day, made a 90 degree turn and picked off a weakling goldfinch for his evening snack, the spectacularly beautiful rose breasted grosbeaks who consume large amounts of food at one sitting preparing to move further north for the warm season, or the immense red-tailed hawk who let me photograph him one winter, but I shall end my talk with one of my favourite reminiscences among favourites.

The last story I am sure many of you have heard but perhaps it will be new to some. It is the story of my beloved Juliet, the white swan. I am sure you know the beautiful line in Savitri, “A slow swan silvering the azure lake.” I don’t know how our friendship began but it is one of the most endearing of my life. Juliet was purchased by a man on a lake about a quarter of a mile away, but one day she flew to our lake and saw me. This magnificent creature, so graceful in water or in the air is, I’m afraid, one of the most ungainly sights you will ever see on land. With her large body and big black feet she had to waddle from side to side as she walked up the hill to greet me. I saw her coming and went to get a handful of corn. I fed her and then she came up to me and put her long neck around my neck and in her way began to speak to me. I don’t know what she said but this began one of the most intimate experiences I have had with birds. She would come regularly and the moment she would see me would come as fast as she could and not always for food. Most of the time it was just to be together. Within a very short time I was able to hold her and stroke her and she would make soft sounds of friendship. One cold winter’s day Mary Helen even took a photograph of the two of us together.

We had a large Persian cat who was king of the house and absolutely fearless. If any animal came by he would run to the window and hiss at them until they left. One day Juliet was with me and as she was very inquisitive she wanted to look in the downstairs room which is our work area. Well, Willoughby was seated regally in a chair and Juliet was curious about him too. But Juliet probably weighed 15 kilos and Willoughby only about 7 or 8 so when she came up to him he flew off his chair and ran and hid. So much for being the king of all he surveyed!

Here in Golconde the king-fisher sits on a branch just outside my room, calmly surveying the water channels, occasionally flashing down to catch a fish. He looks at me and I at him and he always fills my heart with joy.

Again, Sri Aurobindo’s lines from Savitri:

“I caught for some eternal eye the sudden

King-fisher flashing to a darkling pool.”

Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers

And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,

This ends my story of experiences with the “lower” species whom I think you can now see, are not at all lower, but creatures of light and grace who inhabit this wonderful world which is and truly shall be one day, divine.

I close with Sri Aurobindo’s beautiful words on Light.

“Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision's limited range.

For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.

God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.”

Questions? One request. I had sent numerous photographs of Mother’s Garden to Tehmiben and these were loaned out to many Ashramites. We forgot to whom we loaned the last set and would be grateful if they could be returned to me at Golconde so that others may have the opportunity to see them.