The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

According to birding tradition, the first bird seen on the first day of the new year “sets the tone for your next twelve months” (5). This year, Renkl says, her first bird was a crow, “humankind’s steadfast companion” (6). While many cultures associate crows with death (so much so that English cultures refer to a group of crows as “a murder of crows”), Renkl notes that other cultures associate the birds with intelligence, adaptability, and transformation. Now in her sixties, a time of change, Renkl clings “to the crow’s promise of metamorphosis” (7). To her, this bird, which she sees on the first day of the new year, represents the possibility for hope and renewal.

One afternoon, Renkl finds a sick fox. The fox has mange, a result of the changing suburban environment. The rabbits, mice, and voles it ate have been driven away by “giant houses in sterile yards, ruthlessly landscaped to the very edge” (10). Renkl contacts a wildlife rescue center, and the next day, an expert brings a trap. Renkl places bait (raw chicken and sardines) in the trap, expecting to catch a possum or a raccoon, as well as the mangey fox. She returns to the trap until, in the evening, she spots a fox inside. Renkl realizes that it’s a different fox; this fox is healthy and is likely the partner of the sick fox. By placing medication inside raw bacon, Renkl treats this fox with preventive drugs and then releases it from the trap. Now that this fox has learned about traps, she knows that it won’t be trapped again. Likewise, she’ll never again “be free to walk away forever” (13).

The cold weather is “hard” on creatures who don’t hibernate. Renkl’s house is surrounded by bird feeders and baths, which she can observe from the warm indoors. In addition to attracting many birds, these feeders attract birds of prey such as hawks and owls. Renkl takes down the feeders when she spots a hawk; though she feels conflicted about interfering with the natural world, she doesn’t want to “make their bloody work any easier” (17) by allowing them to stake out the feeders she has placed around her house.

Renkl remembers when Nashville got several snowstorms each winter. She recalls the sound of children playing outside. During winter, her yard is popular with many birds as they try to survive the tough, cold season. The uncut monkey grass, for example, provides seeds to hungry robins. Increasingly, Renkl has allowed her yard to become overgrown to accommodate wildlife. She remembers “an alpha redbird” (21) that established its territory in her yard and guarded this territory fiercely. One day, she found the bird dead and worried whether this “Shakesperean hero [who had] come to a terrible end” (22) might have survived had she kept a dense brush pile back then, as she now does.

In “Praise Song for the Praise Song of a Song Sparrow in Winter,” Renkl writes of a rare occurrence: A song sparrow took up residence in her yard. The sparrow’s loud, hearty singing taught her that “one exuberant, unceasing song can change everything” (23).

Renkl feels complete despair when following politics. She immerses herself in the natural world to escape the anger and hate. Fundamentally, however, she believes that “most people are good” (25). Deciding to act rather than lament the state of the world, she begins to teach a class for refugee families. The excitement and warmth of the lesson quickly dissipates on the way home, however, as she turns on a news broadcast. She drives to a little park and sits amid the peaceful sound of nature. For a few minutes, it’s “enough.”

Renkl fondly remembers her red peacoat, which she purchased when she lived in Philadelphia. The urban surroundings offered no “reminders of home” (29), such as birdsong, but the red coat kept her warm during the colder months. Renkl’s mother dealt with the winter by reading gardening books and catalogs, but Renkl eventually grew to appreciate winter. Now, as spring comes earlier every year, she believes that “no reasonable argument” (31) can claim that climate change isn’t warming the planet, and she nostalgically recalls the harsh winters of her youth. Now, like her mother, she plans for her spring gardening and takes comfort in the thought of dormant seeds beneath the winter soil.

In “Praise Song for the Dog’s Marvelous Nose,” Renkl praises her dog’s sense of smell. He can smell coyotes, foxes, and other animals long after they’ve disappeared. The dog, like every living thing, knows “a world which exists beyond [Renkl’s] ken” (33).

After a month of rain, Renkl looks forward to spring. She thinks ahead to the season’s baby birds, remembering that her own children will soon leave home, likely for the last time. Due to the COVID pandemic, her two youngest sons moved back into the family home unexpectedly while they finished college and looked for jobs. Now, they plan to move into an apartment together. Renkl feels conflicted, wanting nothing to change and wanting everything to change. Nevertheless, she feels “ready for something different, too” (37).

Renkl discovers something strange in her backyard. The item resembles an owl pellet, only larger. When she posts the image online, naturalists respond, suggesting that it may be “mammal scat.” Determined to find out what it is, Renkl takes it inside and shows it to her husband. With amusement, he reminds her of how, earlier that morning, she “thought the vacuum cleaner was busted” (41). The naturalists on the internet are amused by Renkl’s discovery of a “Hoover hooter pellet” (42).

In “Praise Song for the Mole Hands in Coyote Scat,” Renkl describes the small creatures she sees in her yard. She appreciates them all, though she may love the mole most of all. She describes the mole’s little pink hands, “six-fingers but so human” (43), and describes how she once saw those hands in coyote scat. That the mole had been eaten didn’t break her heart, she says, as it reminded her of how the natural cycle sustains the environment.

In winter, Renkl misses the sound of birdsong from her garden. She describes the many birds that visit her heated birdbath during the colder months. Of all the birds, the corvids—the crows and blue jays—are “most familiar to [her]” (47). She notes how crows are similar to humans: They play, hold grudges, and even seem to make art. Even when they devour the young or the eggs of other birds, the “ceaseless brutality” of nature can’t make Renkl dislike the crows. Their families remind her of how her grandparents moved back in with her great-grandparents after a fire. The days of multigenerational households are gone, Renkl notes, even after a brief COVID-induced resurgence. Many children feel “shame about coming home” (49), which makes Renkl sad. She sits and listens to the crows, trying to understand their language. She wonders whether they’re telling her, as they do the hawk, to “go away.”

Traditionally, Renkl writes, trees were planted in the fall. Now, however, the “once-predictable patterns keep getting upended” (51). The effects of climate change make Renkl feel like King Lear, “raging into the storm” (51). She now feels as though she has entered “the last third of [her] life” (52); her grandparents and parents lived long, but she recognizes the precarity of health. Still, she has work that matters to her. She walks through a forest one evening and finds a cluster of chickweed seedlings growing in the knothole of a large tree. This “mundane miracle” exemplifies how life emerges from death in the natural world. It inspires her.

In late winter, Renkl waits for spring to arrive. She feels life returning around her, yet this joy faces the horrified understanding that humans are “burning this world down” (56). She thinks about how invasive species threaten many local habitats; she knows that such plants and animals can be damaging, but they still bring her joy. She considers humans “creatures built for joy” (57) and encourages readers to take a quiet moment to appreciate the natural world and the rebirth that comes with spring.

Renkl and her husband visit their friends’ cabin, located on a bluff in the woods of the Cumberland Plateau. It’s Renkl’s “favorite place on Earth” (59). When they arrive, winter is ending, and life is returning to the area. Renkl describes how animals and plants will return to life in the area, though she recognizes that “in summer they will all be gone” (62): Such is the way this natural cycle works.

In “Praise Song for a Spring I Was Not Alive to See,” Renkl thinks ahead to the first day of spring. Rather than plants or animals, she’ll think of her grandmother as a young teacher. She’ll imagine her grandmother walking to school through an environment teeming with more life than any Renkl has experienced. So many birds, Renkl imagines, were “singing and singing and singing” then (63).