On Birds and Humans and Love

Spring brings not only the colors of new leaves and flowers; it also brings the sounds of birdsong.  Behind those reassuring notes lies the new life of nests and eggs.  That annual occurrence makes the following Wisdom in Leaves article just as relevant as it was seven years ago:

It is a tale of tender, parental care -- among both humans and birds.  It is also a tale of love, even among the birds, dare I say, even if instinctive.  The story will eventually lead to the family of a virtually forgotten 19th-century author.  But let me begin with the matter of those birds.

The contemporary naturalist David Attenborough, in his TV series and book Life on Earth, pointed out how so much of birds' instincts, behavior, and time expended is centered on nurturing one thing:  the egg, and, of course, what comes from it.  He wrote, "Birds... have to incubate their eggs and that is a very dangerous business."

Now shift back over a century to the Centennial Exposition of 1876, a world's fair held in Philadelphia.  Among the exhibits was a display of the now famous artwork of John James Audubon, who introduced Americans to many of the birds of the North American continent. The critical link in this story is that among the fascinated viewers of Audubon's art was a twenty-nine year-old woman named Genevieve Jones.  Audubon's work engaged with two of her own interests.  Growing up, she had learned watercolor painting from her mother. And she had collected bird nests while accompanying her doctor father on his buggy rounds to patients.

Genevieve Jones

"Gennie" Jones became captivated by the idea of creating a book similar to Audubon's but covering the 130 species of birds that nested in the state of Ohio, where she lived with her parents. She hoped such a book would enable people to do something she had been unable to do as a child -- identify such nests as that of a Baltimore oriole.  The immense project was undertaken, with Genevieve and a friend learning how to make the life-sized lithographic drawings.  Her brother helped collect nests, and her father financed the project.  Neighborhood girls helped hand-color the prints.

Then tragedy struck.  Only two years into the project, with only part of the book published,

Genevieve caught typhoid fever and died.  Nevertheless, just in the way that birds do not abandon a nest after one of the chicks dies, the Jones family committed themselves to completing the project.  The mother learned how to make illustrations more scientifically precise than she ever had.  The technology of the time required transporting the sixty-five-pound printing stones to a printer 50 miles away in Cincinnati. After seven more years, the project was completed. Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio, with text by Genevieve's brother, was published in 1886.

The full story of Genevieve Jones, her family, and their book is told in America's Other Audubon by Joy M. Kiser (© 2012).  I am struck by how the matter of parental nurturing weaves throughout the tale:  Birds nurturing their young in nests.  The parents of Genevieve nurturing their daughter's love of art and of Nature.  The entire family contributing to the Illustrations of Nests project.  And all of that nurturing symbolized by those all so natural nests.

~~~

Do you have any remembrances of nests or of birds nesting?

(The quote about birds is from

 Life on Earth by David Attenborough, © 1979,  p. 195.)