"Hope is the thing with feathers"

I have been incredibly privileged to spend several months in New South Wales, Australia, conducting fieldwork for my PhD. I came to know one species particularly well -- the White-eared Honeyeater -- and the birds that I encountered helped me see the world through a different lens. I experienced the fragmentation of the landscape as they might, as I drove from one small remnant patch of habitat to another in search of them with A. and E. I found small strongholds, where they were highly abundant and almost over-crowded -- their tail feathers chaffed and worn. I came upon tiny outposts where just a handful of individuals could survive. And in between, I saw the vast empty spaces where they cannot live anymore. Pastures and fields mean very different things to different species -- a human necessity for us, arguably, and a barren wasteland for others. The birds that I found were living and singing, as if unaware of such a tragedy. They cannot ask us to change our ways, at least not in a language we will understand.

And so, if they never "ask a crumb of us" in the immortal words of Emily Dickinson -- if we never hear the meaning behind their songs, even in the final hour of extremity -- will we let them go someday?

I hope they'll always be here, to participate in the cycle of life as it splits and weaves across the tapestry of time.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And Never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

--Emily Dickinson

I've heard it, too, in the magical dawn chorus of the Australian bush and in the exuberant declarations of a single Carolina Wren, alone in the concrete-clad landscape of Boston.

Weddin Mountains National Park, New South Wales, Australia