The Life Of The Skies

by Jonathan Rosen

We are all birdwatchers.

Over cities and jungles and open plains, the sky is animated by the flight of birds, and their presence reminds us of the wild element of life on earth that can never be suppressed. In The Life of the Skies , Jonathan Rosen explores the significance of this timeless pursuit, chronicling his own birding adventures alongside those of John James Audubon, Teddy Rooseevelt, and others. In the process, he discovers the interconnections--literary, philosophical, sceintific, and spiritual--between life on the ground and life up above. Richly researched, lyrically written, The Life of the Skies is "a tribute to the natural world and man's place in it" ( Bloomberg News ).

Genres: Birds, Nature, Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Environment, Natural History

342 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 2008

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say Jonathan Rosen’s “The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature” is a book about birding is like saying the Queen Mary was a boat. Well yes it was, or is, but it is also so much more.

At its core is the author’s newfound love of birding, which the New Yorker pursues in Central Park. His is a spiritual connection to birds and nature or as he cites famed biologist E.O. Wilson, a “biophilia,” i.e. the love of life.

Through the book’s series of connected essays, Rosen also manages to trace the history of our relationship to birds through the writings and lives of literary and historic figures: Audubon, Thoreau, Darwin, Wallace, Dickinson, Whitman, Faulkner, Theodore Roosevelt, to name a few.

But to balance these spiritually uplifting sentiments, Rosen weaves in a cloud of melancholy. The book begins and ends with the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird that he points out “does and does not exist.” Is it extinct or not? And if it is extinct, what does that say about us?

“The Life of the Skies” is a hopeful, celestial title, but his darker subhead “Birding at the End of Nature” is the real crux of the work. As anyone who loves birds already knows, species are in jeopardy all over the world. The author uses a line from poet Robert Frost to bring this point home: “What to make of a diminished thing.”

Indeed. What do we make of a diminished planet? The natural world of Audubon, Darwin and Wallace is gone. How should we feel, loving a thing that is slowly vanishing?

Excellent book.

[Udit Nair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Birdwatching is one of those activities that seems simultaneously marginal and utterly central to the business of being human and of figuring out what it means to be human. I personally tend to seek out to feathered bipeds whenever in doubt or probably just for the sake of it. It's also because birdwatching essentially is an exercise in balance. It has built in acknowledgement that the nature is finite; you don't shoot the bird, you look at it. You bring along a guidebook, emblem of library world, even as you wander out into nature in pursuit of something wild. You get the thrill of seeing an untamed creature, but immediately you cage it in its scientific name and link the bird, and yourself, to a classification system of nomenclature that harks backs to ages.

This book is literally filled with great words of symbolism like this. To a greater extent I do agree with the fact that birding has this element of mystique which is very essential to its core. Although I won't go far to claim any divine or spiritual or religious notions to it. Although the second half of the book was filled with things like these but still i would want to rate it higher. The sole reason is that there are some passages in book which connected so much that i just couldn't give it any less stars.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up in the library as it was reviewed in the Freakonimics link blog I read. The book is beautifully written, the words flow. My eyes skim over them and I almost absorded the story. I think it is the best reflection I have ever read.

The book is not just about birds, it is about the authors connection to the natural world. It helps I suppose if you are a bird/nature lover. Just today I took a bike ride and saw a California quail and a roadrunner, and what I think was a peregrine falcon.

I don't recommend the book to you though, the author stretches sometimes, creating links and meaning where there is probably not one. I don't like that quality, but I forgive the guy.

He said that he got into birding when he over heard a man (a rabbi) at lunch saying, "The warblers are almost here, I cannot wait." and he had to know what the warblers were and why there were so edge of the seat.

Again, not a recommended read for someone who doesn't like birds. But I give it five stars, and I am star stingy.

[Byron Edgington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we have a book that should appeal only to the birders among us, yet has a fascinating attraction for those of us too who watch birds only from backyard feeders and/or at a zoo. That's because Jonathan Rosen has infused his book with the existential, spiritual, historical and taxonomic aspects of birds themselves, and what those feathery creatures tell us about ourselves. As a retired aviator myself I had a particular interest in Rosen's book, because I shared the skies with birds for much of my life, gaining a somewhat different perspective on them than most people do, even most birdwatchers. In any case, Rosen unpacks several topics around the basic idea of avian exploration: self-knowledge, family--in a small 'f' sense and as humanity itself, his own forays into Central Park to witness seasonal birds come and go, and even the connection between his father and himself and how birding affects that connection. Woven throughout the book is the marvel among committed birders over the appearance of an Ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird, thought long extinct, appeared in Mississippi in 2005. It created a stir, and further exploration. What did the appearance portend? No one seems to know, but it may have something to do with climate change, another topic Rosen views through his birding lens.
The book strays pretty far afield at times, into such things as political aspects of birding and dangerous habits of some birders, but all in all a very satisfying work dedicated to what is perhaps man's first and strongest jealousy of another species. Since the first bird was seen eons ago, we've had the impulse to fly. This may be what led us into exploration of other kinds as well. Birders may have mankind's primary motivation.
Byron Edgington, author of The Sky Behind Me: A Memoir of Flying & Life

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosen spent his early bird watching days in lush haunts in Central Park while writing for The New Yorker magazine. Drawn out by friends and acquaintances and fascinating sightings reported by other birders, Rosen became an explorer. He picked his way through Southern swamps in hope of glimpsing the possibly extinct ivory-bill woodpecker and trekked through Israel and Palestine seeking birds of the Old Testament against a backdrop of war.
Rosen takes us with him on every adventure. Along the way he shares what he has learned about the world as it was and those who uncovered its secrets. He observes Audubon and Theodore Roosevelt, Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and brings to life a complex world of discovery in the name of science and destruction in the name of progress.
A prime storyteller, Rosen moves gracefully from Hebrew myth to Southern plantation weaving the threads of then and now, here and gone into a memorable fabric we want to fold and keep.
He shares the lesser known words of William Faulkner, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, along with those of modern scientists and Persian poets. I ended up with an imposing new list of books I want to read just from reading this one.

[Edith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This admixture of birding, a history of natural history, literature, biography, and religion was not entirely satisfactory. Rosen is at his best dealing with the natural historians--in fact, his account of John James Audubon is fascinating, and, for me, the highlight of the book. His wanderings into literature and religion were somewhat wooly, and at times more self-referential than I found appealing. The birding seemed almost an afterthought at times. Worth reading, with reservations.

[Ohenrypacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Birding of those hobbies, as Rosen points out, that sneaks up on you. I love being out in nature, but I wouldn't consider myself to be a birder, and yet i have field guides to birds, photos of birds from all of my travels, and a curiosity about the bird species in my own back yard that would easily qualify me as such.
I guess reading a book on the history of the hobby that is also part memoir of a kindred spirit is a natural thing to do.

[Sonali · Rating 3 out of 5]

The purpose of Rosen's book is less of an introduction to Birdwatching and more of a poetic meditation of Bird watching in our modern, urban lives. Poetry and literature pervades the book and that is what adds to the introduction to birdwatching - He appeals to nature by appealing to it's aethetic inspiration - both lovely and grotesque.
While parts of the book take the form of an essay on poetry analysis about birds or a commentary on evolution because of birds (neither of which were particularly compelling or intellectually rigorous in insight), I wouldn't fault these tangents as I perceived the book as a Journal, with the liberties afforded as such. His entries about Coleridge lamenting about mid 19th century London's only touch with nature as being the sky and whether his son will experience the Nature he knew, or about his own struggles with drawing the line between technology and conservation (DDT risking birding populations to extinction v. eradicating malaria) and various ruminations about our connection to the Earth via Birds was honest in rekindling my own eco-conciousness and forces me to ask the same questions about my children's experience with nature.
Rosen touches on interesting topics from chapter to chapter, but he only succeeds on asking compelling questions or bringing up interesting facts without completely satisfying the reader's curiosity which he successfully kindles. I felt this most when he related his journey to Israel, and the merger of 3 continent's worth of migratory patterns and the related Jewish myths about the bird, particulary the owl. He mentions Hume's Birds of India in a paragraph, but fails to connect the universal intrigue of the owl. Or, he mentions Emerson's graphic poem about the incarnation of Helen of Troy, without taking the myth one step further to realize other ancient cultures have similar fascination with the "shameless" sexuality of the animal kingdom.

[BookSweetie · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I think many birdwatchers carry an unspoken hope in the heart: not to be in a world where everything is preserved, but to be in a world where nothing needs to be preserved. To feel that watching birds is not an artificial pursuit but a natural one. Because for so many eons of our evolutionary history, nothing in nature had to be preserved. It was our own preservation that we spent all our time and energy on, not the preservation of the world around us. It took all we had just to dent the wilderness a little.” Page 47 in The Life of the Skies
.....
This book is, in the words of the author (on page 15), “a book about birds, the impulse to watch them, the impulse to capture them in poetry and in stories. It is a book unified only by my own experience, enriched by my reading and the stories and experiences of others.” His opinion is that birding is a fun, fulfilling pastime, but it is “more than merely that. Birdwatching is intimately connected to the journey we all make to find a place for ourselves in a post-Darwinian world. This book is my journey.”

The author Jonathan Rosen read widely for this book and pulls from many sources to create a work that is less one narrative than many related chapters. So, in addition to memoir, the book is full of history, natural history, philosophy, poetry, and biography. He writes on page 301: “The outdoor world of birdwatching is bound to an indoor world of books...”


Prologue (Biophilia)

Part 1: Backyard Birds

The Ghost Bird
Audubon’s Parrot
Love and Death
Whitman’s Mockingbird
Bear Necessities
Thoreau’s Spyglass
Sailing to Gondwanaland
Audubon’s Monkey
The Republic of Feathers
Where E meets S
Frost at Midnight

Part II: Birds of Paradise

Missing Links
Bird of paradise
Rivers of Doubt
A Passage to Palestine
The Hidden Swamp
Birding in the Dark
The Doctor Bird
American Hoopoe
The bird is the word
Epilogue (Magic hour)

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book wasn't at all about what I anticipated. These essays were woven together in a philosopical perspective about birding. The author took the reader on a journey through time examining authors and poets and how theology and science clashed or supported the images of birds. The last line of Robert Frost's "The Ovenbird" reads "...what to make of a diminished thing." and the author closes the book reminding the reader that we are in that "magical hour" before night (literally and figuratively).

I once spent the month of July in Washington, DC. and what struck me most was never waking up to the sounds of birds. It was so unusual for me and so sad. I missed the sounds of the white-throated warblers, the ovenbirds, the loons, the blue jays, and the barred owl behind my house. If you never know them, you don't know what you're missing. I fear this scenario is all too true for too many people. Will that "magical hour" have any meaning for most people? I fear for the birds.

[Jim Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine combining birding with geography, philosophy, literature, religion, and any number of additional categories of thinking. That is what Rosen does in this book The hero of the book is the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, who (personal pronoun used intentionally) becomes everything from a god to a mystery creature in the book. Rosen presents birding and birdwatching (used as almost simultaneous terms, but discussed in that regard as well) as the ultimate spiritual experience, which represents everything from a hobby to grand philosophical explanation for our very being. It is a fascinating book--a quasi devotional for the daily inspiration of all birders (or bird-watchers).

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea what this book was when I picked it off the shelf of a thrift shop but it is an excellent collection of bird related essays which explore early naturalists, poet and authors references to birds and some philosophical/religious topics. It drew a wide variety of sources together in an engaging manner.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not a bird watcher, much less a birder. But I loved reading this book, which gave me a lovely sense of pleasure of understanding more about people who are. Exploring the ideas and exploits of Audubon, Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt, and others, the author offers a compelling vision of what we are doing to nature. Highly recommend.

[Steve Solnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an erudite, fascinating and somewhat quirky journey around the theme of birdwatching.

Rosen meanders - though he might prefer the term "saunters," which he defines at least twice - through a two-pronged reverie. At times slightly repetitive and often recursive, it is part personal history, part biography, part literary analysis, part philosophical-theological examination. Rosen's first half is about how man can live in a man-diminished world, with birds as the constant reminder of both the idealized state of nature and the fact that our experience of nature in the modern world is mostly simulacrum. He leans heavily here on Thoreau, Frost, Audubon and Teddy Roosevelt among others.

The second - and for me the less coherent - part examines the "collision of the historical and biblical and ornithological" mostly (but not wholly) in the Holy Land. Here, the quest is for the spiritual, and the protagonists are Dickinson, Melville, Darwin and Wallace. At times, he seems to be working hard to keep this junket relevant.

A through-line in the book, which Rosen often loses and then revives, is his search for the ivory-billed woodpecker, once thought extinct. This takes him to several swamps (and one former swamp), to confront the fact that just beneath our civilized veneer, the swamp lives on. I found myself wishing he'd spent more time on the woodpecker, or that he'd found it.

Overall, this is a rich book of ideas and personal reminiscences, with some very illuminating close readings of poets and their avian inspirations. I'll confess the book was particularly resonant for me - a recent convert to birding in the very parts of Central Park Rosen describes so well. To a non-birder, this may be a more exotic journey, or, perhaps, an invitation.

[David Rudin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more of a philosophical treatise on birding and less about the amazing creatures that birds are or even tales from the field. All of that coupled with Rosen’s belief that we are stewards of the creatures of the earth, really made this book a disappointment. The steward routine has been used to justify destroying habitat and wiping out species and even at its best it means taking care of creatures when it suits us.

The philosophical musings are at times painful and random, almost as if birding needs some grander justification beyond observing the remarkable creatures that birds are. The book is at its best when talking about some of the remarkable characters who have contributed to bird conservation and ornithology: Teddy Roosevelt, John James Audubon, Alfred Russel Wallace etc… Rosen would have done better to go deeper into these legends and spare us the philosophy.

[Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meditations on birding from a New Yorker who was introduced to the pursuit in Central Park, the book returns several times to the emblem of the ivory-billed woodpecker with meanders through biography of 18th century naturalists and conservationists, and our place in and duty to the natural world.

I'm adding this is on my 5-foot shelf thanks to its transect though history, prose, poetry, philosophy and natural science through 2 centuries and with glimpses of the land of nearly every continent, every ocean, and the sky above.

[Isabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

p 70 each chapter is stand alone, more like a collection of articles/episodes. Which one by one they are lovely, but collected for sequential reading is for me too much. Time for this one to go back to the library

[John Lorenc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely love this book: birding, poets, naturalists, the meaning of life! What else could you for! For me this book had all that & it was well written.

[Noel Larson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why can't we celebrate women birders and female ornothologists more?

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the birding content of this book but became a little lost when the narrative turned to poetry and religion. I see the connections but found those pages to be a struggle.

[Wayne Woodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual look at birding from a philosophical point of view mostly focusing on older birders and their contributions.

[Lynn Pratt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read about Lewis and Clark, Audubon and Darwin before but I learned more. I’ve always been fascinated by birds. Good poetic read

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

“what to make of a diminished thing”

This book isn’t so much about birding and birdwatching as it is a meandering of ideas that uses birding as the main focus. It’s tempting to call this a literary critique of birdwatching as literature appears almost as much as the birds.

Rosen frequently calls back to writers and poets, such as Thoreau, Whitman and Frost, but also those who may be more obvious such as Audubon, Darwin and Wallace. (Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the idea of evolution through natural selection at the same time as Darwin.)

The frame of the book is an attempt to find a bird that was claimed extinct but recently spotted – the ivory-bill woodpecker. This one bird can represent both despair and hope at the same time. The reason the bird went extinct was due to human logging of old growth forests. Hope is that it still survives, remained hidden all these years. Despair in that we have realized that our species can cause many other species to go extinct. Then hope in the attempt, or struggle to reverse that trend. Hope and despair is often found in the book.

The second half of the book Rosen goes to Israel for birding. Jewish heritage, history, religion, and of course the holocaust comes up. Perhaps the latter is brought into the book as a somewhat relation to the extinction of the ivory-bill and the attempted extinction of the Jewish people, both brought about by humans, albeit one consciously and the other unwittingly. This is just one example of the various connections Rosen brings up throughout.

There are some lines, some quirks to the book I haven’t seen before or extremely rare. At one point Rosen talks about lying and then reveals his story early in the book about how he started his habit of birdwatching is a lie. That’s curious. If you’re going to state it correctly why do that? You can edit. And occasionally there are moments that Rosen seems to think what the critics may say about his book and in this anticipation he brings up the idea and then answers it as well. Such as in the epilogue he writes: “Can a book about birdwatching sustain a reference to the horrors human beings inflict on each other?” The horrors he means specifically the holocaust. This oddness does remind me of a few authors who have written similarly. They think they know what people will say then dispute it within the same book. I don’t particularly like the tactic but can understand the motivation. They wish for a stronger argument within the book. But what is Rosen’s argument? That the environment is diminished for the birds?

“what to make of a diminished thing” This phrase comes up quite frequently. Rosen doesn’t quite answer it, as it is more a meditation, something to ponder rather than something to be fully answered. But if he does provide a hint of an answer for the reader it is found in the last pages: “We need to know that we are asking it about ourselves as well as the world around us.”

I really enjoyed the book, but not in the way I expected. I thought it would be more about birdwatching than a meandering of literary references and more. But I liked it. I’m sure some, who really are more interested in just the birdwatching aspect might find it tedious. There is a lot in this book, many digressions and sometimes the bird portion just seems like a thin veil to get to what he really wants to talk about. But it is interesting, there’s surprises on nearly every page, not knowing where this is going or where you’ll really end up.

Final note – didn’t like there isn’t an index, and this book really needs an index! Why this trend in non-fiction books to get rid of useful things such as references and indexes (indices)? At least he included notes on sources.

Book rating: 5 stars

[Lois · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birdwatching is only the starting point of this book. Jonathan Rosen incorporates the thoughts of a wonderfully diverse range of writers, from poets to evolutionists (is that a word?) into the world view he develops in this book. In some ways the theme is dark - in the words of Robert Frost's poem, it is "what to make of a diminished thing". The diminished thing being nature, wilderness, extinct species. But the tone of the book seemed more to be appreciation of what is left, hope that some of what is lost can be restored, in addition to concern over what we might do to our planet in the future.

I have a few quibbles. Rosen follows a quote from Thoreau, "time is but the stream I go a-fishing in", with the comment "whatever that means". I felt the same way about a few of Rosen's aphorisms.

I also found his observation that more men than women are birders to be limited. It may be true for certain types of birding, especially the type that focuses on maximizing the number of species seen. But that is just one type of birding, and it's a pity to use one small part of birding to characterize such a diverse activity. It ignores other types of birding that focus more on, say, maximizing an understanding of bird behavior and interaction, or how birds fit into ecosystems and habitats.

But still, these are quibbles. I loved the way Rosen's musings expanded in my mind. And, (and this could be either a praise or a complaint) the way this book expanded the list of books I want to read, and of books I want to re-read.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this sprawling meditation on birdwatching, Rosen reflects on some of his own experiences as a birder: how he got started, what it’s like birding in Central Park surrounded by the city, and a fruitless search for the (likely extinct) Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Along the way, he also reflects on some bird-y poetry and literature by greats like Walt Whitman, Faulkner, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost.

I liked the book, mainly for all the great literature it incorporates, but also for the way he explores birding carefully and deeply, with a religious awe. It is a bit long and unfocused, with some strange diversions (somehow a book about birding winds its way to the holocaust) -- and by the second half, he seems to be coming back to the same ideas again and again. But overall it was worth it for me for the little gems along the way, like this poem by Thomas Hardy:

These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.

[Dorothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am an avid birder and bird blogger, so when this book was recommended to me by a fellow birder and bird blogger, I decided to get it. That was almost a year ago, and it languished on my to-be-read shelf for many months. Finally, last week, I picked it up to read, and, afterwards, I could hardly put it down.

It is, in short, extremely well-written, and it is a compelling read for anyone with an interest in birds and in the history of birding and the conservation movement.

Mr. Rosen takes birding as his "jumping off point" but, from there, he launches himself into many areas of human thought and endeavor - from science, religion, philosophy, sociology, to natural and human history. You name it; he touches on it here. It is a wide-ranging essay on the human condition as well as the condition of birds in today's world.

I would unhesitatingly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in birds and in their influence on human history.

[Tarynroch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because I've decided that I want to get into birdwatching. I know nothing about birds, but I do believe that they can tell us many things about how our world is changing. I haven't done much birdwatching yet, but hopefully someday.

Life of the Skies provides an account of history's ornithologists, by hobby or by career, which is both interesting and informative. Rosen also gets into the psyche of the birdwatcher. What drives them to engage in this activity? I wouldn't normally be interested in this type of analysis, but Rosen does it well and keeps the book moving.

My only complaint is that the book falls apart a bit at the end. Rosen goes off on a tangent about Israel, but apart from that indiscretion, this is worth reading if you have any interest at all in our feathered friends.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really interested in birdwatching (although I do like watching birds) but I went to the Museum of Natural History to look at the taxidermied birds on the day I started this book, which is to say it definitely piqued my interest. (In case you're wondering, there was a section about Audobon and taxidermy at the beginning- it's not that I don't know the difference between live & dead birds!) The author writes about Audobon, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinsen, Emerson, and other assorted American naturalist types who I usually like reading about, so it should have been great. But in the end this book just didn't hang together for me- he didn't seem to have anything provocative to say, and the birds weren't enough. I did like the part was when he goes looking for the good lord bird, which is supposed to be extinct, mostly because I just read The Good Lord Bird and that bird was on my mind.

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Birding serves as the framework for a much larger question that nags the author in this book: How do we maintain our connection to the natural world - at one time the only home we knew - as we are propelled farther and farther away from it? Jonathan Rosen tackles this predicament through birding. Rosen examines the idea of rural vs. urban living and draws deep metaphors of freedom, history and myth to birdwatching. Some are more successful than others. Lots of poetic references to Whitman, Frost, Stevens and the like, that lift the book out of its labored moments. All in all, the book left me marveling at one of the last links to the wild in my backyard. Definitely want to upgrade my binoculars!

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Balancing between "backyard birds" (Central Park) and "birds of paradise" (Louisiana and Israel), Rosen offers his own experience and reflections as well as historical and literary connections from Whitman, Frost, and Dickinson to Virginia Hamilton.
This is a lovely read, sending the reader back to the literature and the bird books equally. Interesting historical material about Audubon, Central Park, the ivory billed woodpecker, Teddy Roosevelt and Israel. The theme comes from Frost's Ovenbird poem: "What to make of a diminished thing?" - hardly a new idea but very well described and ultimately positive. Frustratingly, while it has an extensive and interesting list of sources, it has no index so it is hard to go back and find the ideal that teasingly sticks.