by Nina Burton
Indeed, it was clear that humans had missed out on quite a bit in the mental world of birds. We had underestimated their intelligence as well as their communication. It wasn’t just that many of the tones they produce are beyond our range of hearing. Even the internal order of the sounds seems to carry meaning. Black-capped chickadees can combine six tones in various ways, more or less like syllables of different words.
Did that mean that birdsong can be compared to our speech? This was a possibility both Aristotle and Darwin were open to. And it does, in fact, turn out that there is a connection, although it is hidden deep down inside birds’ brains. When researchers were obsessed with measuring skulls, birds fell near the bottom of the scale of intelligence. When attention was directed inward, though, into the nerve cells within the brain, those of humans and birds turned out to be linked in a similar fashion, and it was found that learning takes place in more or less the same areas of the brain. The difference is that birds’ neurons are packed tightly, with quick connections, because there is less space in their brains.
And that wasn’t all. It was also discovered that there are common genetics behind the similarities. A gene discovered in 1998 was given the awkward name Forkhead box protein P2, typically abbreviated as FOXP2. It became popularly known as the language gene, because mutations can cause language impairments and possibly even autism. But we are not alone in possessing this gene. It is also found in other animals, where mutations cause issues similar to ours – so, in birds, such mutations lead to stuttering or difficulty imitating sounds.
High above me, a blackbird was singing its way up a pine tree, without even the tiniest stutter. Its neurons communicated quick as lightning, and if song is a language, the blackbird was a linguistic genius. In general, they’re probably no brighter than the monotonous dove or the inarticulate crow, for intelligence can also be silent, and there is endless variety in languages. But the blackbird’s song may well be the loveliest of all. The fact that it arrives in the spring and then falls silent gives it a transitory intensiveness. Just as with our own songs, it probably has to do with good old love, and yet each bird adds just a bit of personal flair to its song, and the age-old themes of life and poetry continue.
As it turned out, there weren’t many migratory birds for me to welcome, for most of the birds seemed to have overwintered on the property. At last, though, I did have one arrival – the water butts that would collect rainwater from the roof. After they were noisily rolled to the corners of the cottage, I invited the seller to have a cup of inaugural coffee beside them, and when I thanked him for the delivery he told me that the barrels were quite well-travelled. They had previously transported juice from some exotic country to the harbour in Rotterdam, and from there had made their way to a grocer in southern Sweden. In my mind, I associated their journey with the world of migrating birds. Where the birds had followed the shining sun, the barrels had mirrored their journey full of golden juice. As I heard a couple of gulls calling from the sound in the distance, I even felt a hint of the harbour atmosphere from the barrels’ stopover.
It was in that frame of mind I wanted to eat dinner once I was alone again. As the fish au gratin I had brought was heating, I wiped down the patio table I had inherited. Some bird with no sense of table manners had just left a calling card on it, so I put down a tablecloth before I brought out the meal. Appetising steam rose from it, and all I needed to complete the tableau was a cold beer. It took only thirty seconds to fetch one, but that was just enough time for an attentive bird to make its move. When I came back outside, a common gull was standing in the middle of the mashed potatoes.
This sneak attack had come out of the blue. I hadn’t seen any gulls around, but I suppose they must have noticed the smell of fish all the way out in the sound. The gull took off, contented, its feet covered in sauce. The fillets of fish had already been devoured.
As a teenager, I loved gulls for the way they seemed to float above the sea. I didn’t know much about them back then and, apparently, I shared my uninformed love with many others – in the 1970s, the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull sold a million copies and was even made into a film. It was about a philosophical aerial artist who soared in solitude above the materialistic squabbles of his flock. He didn’t have much in common with actual gulls, who are extremely social. When zoologist Niko Tinbergen began to study them in the 1950s, he found an entire society opening before him. Each movement of the body and each sound of the voice relayed information about food and danger, anger and submission, cooperation and mate finding, chick rearing and suitable nesting sites.
Like so many birds, gulls have been drawn to developed areas where rubbish heaps and eating establishments always have food to offer. The roofs of buildings make safer homes than coastland, so from my apartment in Stockholm I had been able to follow the fates of a gull family on the next roof over. I watched the babies learn to fly, and when one chick fell down, the gull mother torpedoed herself at every approaching pedestrian on the pavement.
Gulls move as easily through varied environments as they do in the air. They can drink both saltwater and freshwater, and their menu runs the gamut from fish to small rodents and all the edible tidbits humans scatter around. They’re inventive, too; they lure worms out of the ground by performing an energetic stomping that mimics the sound of rain. They’ve even been observed attracting goldfish in ponds by holding bits of bread in their beaks. For a clever gull, there are a thousand dinner options. And why should a gull see any difference between a fish in the water and a factory-made fish au gratin? At least I still had my beer and could make a sandwich to accompany it.
It was still light outside. Above me, the blackbird transformed air into an endless variety of songs, for the sky has no boundaries. High above the ground it is full of life, so as my dinner rested half-digested between soaring wings, I felt every breath of air I took was shared with thousands of others.
Yes, even with the squirrel, who was just scampering across the very roof where she had so recently made a scene. Now she seemed satisfied once more, and that made me happy too. Although it was odd how she so suddenly vanished by the roof. When I went over to the cottage, I had a sense of déjà vu. The roof was deserted, and the new screening the tradesmen had installed between roof and wall was a nice, fresh, springy green. But there was something familiar about it: a new hole had very recently been chewed in the same corner where the squirrel had made her old entrance.
Chapter Two
Wingbeats at the Door
The birds weren’t the only ones having a hectic spring. The tradesmen and I had any number of tasks to finish up around the cottage before summer arrived, so my trips there became more frequent. The squirrel was so disturbed by my presence that she no longer felt comfortable in the house, and in fact this was part of my plan. But I also enjoyed visiting the property while the year was unfolding into life. The birds were singing, and as buds emerged the insects began to awaken. The light on tiny wings was not grand or flaring, but it was still intense.
As early as March, I found a sleepy fly bumbling around in a window. As I waved it outside, I thought of the massive number of insects it takes to feed a family of great tits. If that fly found a partner before it was eaten up, there could be as many as a hundred thousand new flies within the month – so, out on a mating adventure, fly!
A little later I had to help a newly awakened brimstone butterfly out of the rain gauge. It was a sunny yellow male who must have been eager to emerge from his hibernation spot so he would be ready when the females woke up. Springtime feelings were clearly not only for the birds. Butterflies, too, have hearts that beat faster at the scent of a potential partner, and it seemed to me that this yearning was especially fervent in brimstones. Their mating period can last for a week, as the male truly wants to give his female everything, including nutrients and hormones that increase her rate of egg-laying. Which meant that perhaps soon I could find her tin
y eggs on select leaves.
Before I realised that thirsty insects need a dish of water, the narrow rain gauge inadvertently became a bug trap. The next one to take a dip in it was a big bumblebee. She was so tousled and tired by the time I fished her out that I went in to get a spoonful of sugar water. My rescue efforts were clearly appreciated. As she dipped her trunk-like proboscis into the spoon, I thought I could see her low spirits melt away. She fluffed up her fuzzy coat with some acrobatic assistance from her legs, and as its strands began to gleam in the sunlight I felt the urge to stroke them with my finger.
I knew how soft a bumblebee’s fur could be, because I had once felt it against my skin. This was on a hot summer bus trip during which a bumblebee kept stubbornly circling me. Perhaps I was wearing some floral perfume, but her attention became so intimate that a man in the seat next to mine felt the chivalrous urge to shoo her away. Instead he managed to wave her into my décolletage. It would have been less than chivalrous to remove the bee from her new location, so there she stayed.
There was a gentle tickle as she moved around. She didn’t sting me, because I had bent over to keep from squishing her, and anyway, ‘she’ might have been a ‘he’. Since the stinger develops from an ovipositor, only females have one, and they don’t like to use it unless they have to. Instead, they might start by lifting one leg in warning, or coughing up an unpleasant odour of butyric acid.
This bumblebee seemed to accept her new company, so I could only return the favour. I would have reacted differently had I been dealing with an earwig. It’s not fair to the earwig, but insects have their skeletons outside their bodies, and bare skeletons arouse unpleasant associations. It’s a different story if they have colourful forewings like ladybirds or hair like bumblebees. And bumblebees are incredibly hairy – American researchers claim to have counted up to three million tiny hairs, which is as many as a squirrel has. This struck me as an improbable amount, but pressed against my skin it did feel reliably soft. During the long journey, as the bumblebee rested against my skin, I made up my mind to learn all I could about my travel companion.
My amateur interest in biology had shifted as time went by. As a child I was fascinated by exotic mammals such as the shy okapi. It’s a bizarre cross between giraffe, zebra and antelope, and appropriately enough, it even has similarities with the chameleon: its eyes can move independently of one another. This living fairy-tale creature was unknown to science until the 19th century, because it hid in the ancient jungles of Congo.
But I later came to realise that I didn’t have to look so far afield to find adventure. Nor was it necessary to look among the mammals, even though they are the easiest to identify with. Another, larger group of animals had come first, and reading about them was sheer science fiction.
There were creatures that could have five thousand eyes, ears behind their knees, taste buds in their feet and a three-dimensional sense of smell. Their language might rely on chemistry or vibrations and still be truly sophisticated. Even 200 million years ago, these creatures had belonged to a high-ranking group of animals that went on to become extremely successful. Today, all the members of this group together would weigh three times more than the sum of all mammals, fish, reptiles and birds. The group also boasts more species than all other animals put together, and on an individual level there are a hundred million times more of them than there are humans.
In short, insects represent the standard size of life on Earth.
Insects had conquered the air long before any small dinosaurs tried out their new wings. Dragonflies first flew 300 million years ago, and the oldest known butterfly fossil is 250 million years old. Since insects are tiny and abundant, grow quickly and mate early, variations arise quickly; since they can manage with little food, they have survived Earth’s catastrophes better than others. While large dinosaurs went extinct, bees, ants, beetles, grasshoppers and lice recovered relatively quickly. At the same time, other species became dependent on insects – not least birds, who evolved from dinosaurs, and the flowers that grew from seeds in the scorched earth. Eventually insects were so tightly woven into the fabric of Earth’s environment that it would not survive without them.
Unfortunately, they’re in trouble with us around. They seem so unlike us, and it’s not easy to crouch down to the perspective of such tiny, fleeting lives. The ones that get really close to us, like mosquitos and fleas, we want nothing to do with. Thus, insects have become a world reserved for devoted experts. I’m not one of them, but I’m happy to listen to those experts who wish to spread their enthusiasm. And I’ve come to understand that it is ultimately thanks to the insects that springtime is filled with birdsong and flowers.
So far, the ground mostly seemed to be covered with old leaves and fallen branches from the springtime storms. To invite the green in, I should probably clean up the property a little. In the tool shed were abandoned implements for every season, from loppers to an ice auger; now I could take the opportunity to inventory these treasures as I looked for a rake.
But I also discovered something else. Next to a sledgehammer lay a few abandoned wasp nests. When I picked them up, they felt so light they might have been made of dust and minuscule wings, even though they were meant to hold a growing family. How could such weightless nests be so sturdy?
To take a closer look at their construction I brought them into the cottage, which, as it happened, had probably contributed to the nesting material. Perhaps it had been chewed from the door on the south side, where the paint was flaking. Then again, this could hardly be considered damage, for the amount of material taken was minimal and the result masterly. No wonder wasps were the world’s first makers of paper. Here they had produced the thinnest kind I had ever seen, in the shape of a round lantern. I gently placed the nests on the kitchen table and removed the outer layer. Inside this globe hung a finely crafted plafond full of six-sided cells. Some were empty, but still resting in others were dead larvae. As an adult, each would have had recognisable individual features, and each would have been born with the skill of making paper that they would then fill with life of their own. Wasn’t that a kind of poetry?
The half-grown wasps looked so young and innocent, lying there all bundled up in their cells. Could they help introduce my sister’s grandchildren to all the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees and so on? Although these young didn’t personally have anything to do with the facts of life, there was a connection by way of their long family tree. About 140 million years ago, a few of their insect-eating foremothers got tired of chasing flying prey and decided to gather protein in the form of pollen instead. And this would prove to change them and the flowers, and the trees.
Rooted plants must deal with their erotic needs by messenger, and until that point the wind had carried pollen to female pistils. But the wind was fickle and high-flown, so a massive amount of pollen had to be released for any of it to reach its destination. Pollen-gathering insects made much better couriers. Since they sometimes had trouble finding the flowers under all the dinosaurs, the magnolias and water lilies helped by decking themselves out in petal skirts. Other flowers followed suit, and in so doing increased their attractiveness with an irresistible nectar.
Then something happened to the newly vegetarian wasp ancestors. Their upper lips and mandibles were reshaped into a straw that could more easily suck up the nectar, and thus they were transformed into bees. For the 130 million years since, flowers and bees have been trying to satisfy each other’s needs; the flowers with their sweetness and the bees with their flight. That looked to me like love and, in any case, it created the garden of paradise in which we humans would one day arrive.
Perhaps the wasps’ contributions to that garden were less evident, but without them there wouldn’t have been any bees. Since they, too, like nectar, they sometimes help with pollination, and they feed their larvae insects that we consider pests. The venom in their sting even seems to be less potent tha
n that of bees. So why didn’t they ever become popular? Is it because they aren’t as hairy?
Many things in life can hang by a hair, especially for bees, since their hair is necessary to capture pollen. In a delightful manner, it also helps in their interaction with flowers. As a bee flies, each forked strand of hair receives a positive electrical charge, while the flowers below have a weakly negative charge. So a small force field arises between the two, intensifying their encounter. They quite literally turn each other on.
The fact that hair preserves warmth was no advantage for honeybees in tropical climates, but it’s a different situation for bumblebees. The temperature was dropping drastically in the Himalayas when they evolved about 40 million years ago, so a coat became a necessity. Thanks to that coat, bumblebees turned out so hardy that they can still be spotted near glaciers. And while honeybees prefer not to linger in temperatures below 16 degrees Celsius, bumblebees are ready to fly when it’s just a few degrees above freezing. A bumblebee queen can even overwinter beneath the snow-covered ground, thanks to her fur and the glycerol in her blood that keeps it from freezing solid.
She likes to dig herself into a north-facing slope so she won’t wake too early. By the time the spring sun has warmed that ground, a few flowers will have come up. The first breakfast of the year is traditionally taken in a couple of pussy willows, whose fuzzy blossoms seem akin to her own fur. The female flower provides energy-rich nectar and the male flower provides nutritious pollen, and that’s just what she needs if the eggs she lays after last year’s mating are to develop. But first she must find a safe home for them.