speech writing disappearing birds

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Birds are remarkable and beautiful animals – and they’re disappearing from our world

In the past half century, North America has lost a fourth of its birds. Earth is now a coalmine, and every wild bird is a canary

When the poet Mary Oliver wrote “Instructions for living a life,” she reminded us: “Pay attention. Be astounded. Tell about it.”

This past autumn, wildlife officials announced that a bird, a male bar-tailed godwit, flew nonstop across the Pacific Ocean 8,100 miles from Alaska to Australia in just under 10 days. Fitted with a small solar-powered satellite tag, the godwit achieved “a land bird flight record”. But of course godwits have been doing this for centuries. Come next April-May, all things well, determined godwits will make the trip in reverse, bound for Alaska to nest and raise their young.

They won’t be alone.

Northern wheatears, songbirds less than six inches long, will arrive in Alaska from sub-Saharan Africa. Arctic terns will return from Antarctica, with each bird flying the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back in a single lifetime. Bar-headed geese will fly over the Himalayas at altitudes exceeding 20,000 feet.

PT Barnum was wrong. The circus is not the greatest show on Earth. Nature is.

How diminished our world would be without birds, those dinosaurs with feathers and songsmiths with wings. Not that I was born John James Audubon. I used to ignore birds, and was poorer for it. Once, in my teens, while out with my .22 rifle, I spotted a red-tailed hawk riding a July thermal. I aimed and fired, and watched it drop from the sky. Stunned, I ran to it and found it thrashing in the dry summer grasses, dying. I walked away, fell to my knees, and threw up.

Now, decades later, I love birds – how they bring me joy and give me wings; how they enlarge my world, slow me down, make me listen. In every hawk I see a velociraptor. In every thrush I hear exquisite music. In every swallow I witness an aerial dance as they snap insects in midair. In every epic migration I find myself redefining what’s possible. And always the same question arises: can we, the human race, in all our commerce and carbon-burning, somehow save our winged cousins?

In the past half century, North America has lost more than one-fourth of its birds. Nearly everywhere, they are in decline. Massive die-offs of flycatchers, swallows, bluebirds, sparrows and warblers – described as thousands of birds “ falling out of the sky ” – have been recorded in recent years in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. Smoke from intense California fires forced tule geese to reroute their migration and take twice as long. Elsewhere, as birds lay their eggs earlier, due to a warming climate, more chicks die from sudden inclement weather events.

This is where we find ourselves, trapped in a diminished world of our own making. Today only 30% of all birds are wild; the other 70% are mostly poultry chickens. In essence, Earth is now a coalmine, and every wild bird is a canary – what ecologists call a “bio-indicator” – in that mine.

Their fate is ours.

Soon after news broke of the flight of the godwit, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced newly extinct species including the ivory-billed woodpecker and Bachman’s warbler. “When the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more,” the naturalist William Beebe once observed, “another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.”

The author and climate crisis activist Kathleen Dean Moore writes , “Unless the world acts to stop extinctions, I will write my last nature essay on a planet that is less than half as song-graced and life-drenched as the one where I began to write.”

Of all the species that have ever existed, more than 99% are now gone, most having winked away during five major extinction events, the last caused by an asteroid that struck Earth some 66m years ago. Today, given global habitat loss (especially deforestation and prairies turned into cropland) and widespread persistent toxins, we – modern humans – are the asteroid. The sixth mass extinction is here, with about 600 species of North American birds at risk from human-caused climate change.

We must safeguard one of nature’s greatest creations: wild birds. Build a better world for them, and we’ll build one for ourselves. We must defend a livable planet by electing politicians who have empathy and an ecological conscience. Vote blue, act green. Restore native habitats and environmental health. Keep domestic cats indoors, and affix silhouetted hawk decals to windows. In the US alone, an estimated three to four billion birds die each year from cat predation and window strikes.

Put a birdfeeder out the window of a nursing home and watch the patients inside brighten. Birds bring happiness and improved health. A European study suggests that a backyard full of birds creates greater human satisfaction than a modest pay raise. Our survival and mental wellbeing are intricately tied to that of healthy lands, waters and biodiversity; nothing proves it better than wild birds.

In August 2020, as the Trump administration sought to weaken the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a federal judge ruled in favor of the act and quoted Harper Lee’s famous novel: “It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime.”

I celebrated the ruling.

Later, in 2021, when the Biden administration reinstated and strengthened the act, I took a walk along the ocean near my home, binoculars (not a gun) in hand, and felt a deep sense of gratitude – even hope – knowing that more than tens of thousands of people around the world would volunteer in the annual Christmas Bird Count , a century-old tradition to pay attention, be astounded, and share stories about birds. Godwits might come to mind, and Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese:

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

A frequent contributor to the Guardian, Kim Heacox is the author of many books, including The Only Kayak, a memoir, and Jimmy Bluefeather, a novel, both winners of the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives in Alaska. His favorite bird is whichever one he’s watching

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The Birds Are Vanishing – And We Are Why

A small minivet male in Narlai, Rajasthan. Photo: Sharp Photography/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Bird populations have been falling steadily in the last three decades – and we are why.
• We have hunted birds, destroyed their habitats and kickstarted climate change.
• We know very little about how climate change is affecting India’s birds.
• A new study recommends creating more ‘important bird areas’, but they may not work in India.

Kochi : Fifty-two year-old Kanwar Singh has been observing birds in and around New Delhi for more than three decades now. While maintaining ‘bird lists’ of bird species and their numbers, he’s seen several changes over the years.

“Bird numbers are definitely lower now than they were even a decade ago,” Singh said. “To long-term birdwatchers, it’s very obvious.”

This is actually a worldwide pattern, according to a new study . It found that around the world, the number of birds has been falling steadily in the last three decades.

We are the reason why. Humans have changed land-use patterns, causing habitat loss and degradation, and have accelerated climate change. We have also hunted birds.

An obvious way to counter this trend is for us to become better at protecting bird habitats – but this has been surprisingly difficult. For example, designating ‘important bird areas’ – safe places set aside for birds – is one solution, but they appear to be ineffective in India. Second, we know shockingly little about how climate change is affecting Indian birds. And third, we need to pay attention to the human dimensions of conservation.

A steady decline

A team of scientists, including Ashwin Vishwanathan of the Nature Conservation Foundation in Bengaluru, examined changes in global bird populations and the threats they face. They compiled findings from previous studies and analysed open-source data from bird surveys across the world.

They also used findings from the ‘State of India’s Birds’ report that some governmental and non-governmental organisations released in February 2020. Finally, the team-members also reviewed changes in the conservation status of birds on the IUCN Red List of threatened species.

Their findings , compiled in a new ‘State of the World’s Birds’ report, found that the populations of 48% of existing bird species worldwide are diving. This is because, among other things, of the two bird habitats most under threat: tropical forests and natural grasslands. The study found the declines to be especially strong among grassland birds in North America, Europe and India.

This global trend mirrors the bird decline described in the 2020 report on India’s birds. This report found that the birds we always thought were common in the Indian subcontinent are actually steadily becoming less common, according to Rajah Jayapal, senior principal scientist at the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore, who contributed to the 2020 report.

“These include [the] small minivet, common woodshrike, Indian thick-knee, cotton teal and rufous-tailed lark.”

While the 2020 report and the new report differ in their methods, their findings are comparable because both used index-based abundance estimates, Jayapal added. These numbers include abundance or population indices and the birds’ Red List indices.

The human hand

The recent study found that changes in land-use caused by human activities have meant that crucial bird habitats worldwide are now lost. We have also degraded many others.

The urban sprawl of Delhi has increased steadily over the last decade, likely longer. Some birding pockets Kanwar Singh used to frequent no longer exist. At this rate, he estimated that at least half a dozen bird species will go extinct in our lifetimes due to habitat loss alone.

“The great Indian bustard is one of them, considering how we’re losing our grasslands.”

There are direct causes as well: we have hunted and trapped birds for food, sport and for the pet trade. Northeast India is one particular place where such “defaunation is pervasive,” the study pointed out.

Then there is climate change – which has affected migratory birds by altering their natural habitats in radical ways.

Curiously, we know very little about the specific impact of climate change on Indian birds, their range sizes or habitats, Jayapal said. “Of particular concern are habitat specialists that are typically found in coastal wetlands, montane grasslands and alpine scrub.”

Reversing decline

For most bird species around the world, it is crucial to conserve some important bird habitats. The study recommends scaling up site-based conservation methods, like designating more ‘important bird areas’ (IBAs) and ‘key biodiversity areas’, as laid down by BirdLife International and the IUCN, respectively.

This said, India may not get much out of IBAs, according to Jayapal.

“IBAs, though a laudable effort beyond legislation towards site-based conservation of birds and their habitats, are unfortunately ineffectual in India, where conservation is often mediated only through strong federal laws,” he told The Wire Science . “The absence of legal sanctity, and therefore state support, for IBAs means that a large number of IBAs outside protected areas in the country remain only on paper.”

He also said IBAs are distributed in a “very patchy” fashion in India. Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have over 30 IBAs each. But Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Meghalaya – “though exceptionally rich in bird diversity” – have fewer than 10 each.

The study also recommended an “increased consideration of the social context of bird conservation interventions”.

This means being mindful of the social dimensions of environmental issues. In India, this means encouraging local people to become “custodians of birds and other wildlife in their own regions”, according to co-author Vishwanathan. One way is using citizen science – where citizens collect scientific data from their backyards and the places they visit.

“I believe that bird conservation cannot be sustained when socioeconomic realities in an area are ignored and people aren’t a part of the initiative.”

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Essay on Birds

500 words essay on birds.

Birds are very special animals that have particular characteristics which are common amongst all of them. For instance, all of them have feathers, wings and two legs. Similarly, all birds lay eggs and are warm-blooded. They are very essential for our environment and exist in different breeds. Thus, an essay on birds will take us through their importance.

Importance of Birds

Birds have different sizes and can be as small as 2 inches and as big as 2.75 metres. For instance, bee hummingbird (smallest) and ostrich (largest). Bird’s existence dates back to 160 million years ago.

There are different types of birds that exist which vary in characteristics. For instance, there are penguins that cannot fly. Further, there are birds that are known for their intelligence like Parrots and Corvidae.

Moreover, we have peacocks which are beautiful and symbolize rain and good weather. Next, there are bats and vultures as well. Birds connect very closely to the environment and are quite intuitive.

They can predict the weather conditions and some are kept near coal mines for the prediction of a mine explosion. It is because they are sensitive to the release of high levels of carbon monoxide. They are quite social and enjoy singing as well. Birds enjoy the freedom of moving anywhere without boundaries.

My Favourite Bird

My favourite bird is the parrot. It is a colourful bird that is present in many parts of the world. It comes in many shapes, sizes and colours. Parrots are famous for having vivid colours.

Some have a single, bright colour while others have a rainbow of different colours. Parrots are usually small and medium in size that mostly eats seeds, nuts and fruits. The lifespan of a parrot depends on its species.

Larger ones like cockatoos and macaws live for 80 years while the smaller ones like lovebirds live for around 15 years. In fact, parrots are quite intelligent. They have the ability to imitate human speech which is why many people keep them as pets.

Consequently, they are also the most sought-after type of bird for commercial purposes. All over the world, people are taking measures to ensure parrots get nice treatment. Many cultures also consider them sacred.

Parrots are highly intelligent and thrive at their best when they are free and not captured in cages. I used to have a parrot when I was little and I never kept it in a cage. It used to sit on my shoulder wherever I went and never flew away. Parrots are my favourite bird.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Birds

Due to hunting, poaching and disruption of the ecological balance, many birds are getting extinct. As a result, birds living in water like swans, ducks and more are also falling drastically in number because of pollution. Thus, we all must take proper measures to help the birds live and save them from extinction. Birds are vital for our ecosystem and its balance, thus we must all keep them safe.

FAQ of Essay on Birds

Question 1: How can we save birds?

Answer 1: We can save birds by doing little things like providing a source of water for them to drink. Further, we can elevate bird feeders and plant native plants and trees for them. Similarly, we can put up birdhouses and garden organically so that birds can feed on insects and worms.

Question 2: Why birds are important in our life?

Answer 2 : Birds are significant for our environment as well as for human beings as they play an important role in every living thing present on earth. Birds are one of the seed dispersers for plants who deliver us food, shelter and medicines and more.

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Birds are Disappearing

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You have probably heard from one of many news sources, like the NY Times and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology , that birds are vanishing. Somewhere between 25 and 30% of all birds in North America have disappeared since 1970. That’s about three billion breeding birds. I have heard estimates of up to 40%.

It’s devastating news, but not new. Ornithologists have been tracking this decline for years. Having been an active ornithologist over that period, I noticed local declines of birds. Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Burrowing Owls, Western Meadowlarks, Horned Larks, and even House Sparrows, are rare in my area. House Sparrows, those ubiquitous pests, almost gone? Incredible. Why?

There are a number of culprits we can place the blame on – windows, cats, wind farms, microwave towers, cars, pollution, you name it. But the research reports indicate that habitat loss and pesticides are the biggest problems. And certainly climate change. Grassland birds showed the biggest decline, probably because that’s where most development takes place. It’s easier to plow up a grassland and pave it than to do so to a forest. Waterfowl actually showed an increase and I suspect that’s because they nest in relatively undisturbed regions in the far north and migrate south to marshes that remain untouched by developers.

It’s appalling to realize that birds are declining at such a precipitous rate – birds that eat insects, pollinate plants, disperse seeds, and make our life richer. They are essential parts of our ecosystems, and at least as important, they are ecological indicators. Like the canary in the coal mine that warned miners about dangerous gases building up, changes in the avifauna indicate that something is up in the ecosystem and it’s not good. If birds are disappearing, what about plants, frogs, mice, deer, fish, snakes, insects and other invertebrates?

As we destroy habitat and replace it with houses, mini-malls, and gas stations, we are not only eliminating the lives of plants and animals, but we are making our world more sterile and less healthy. Forests and grasslands clean and cool our air and filter our water. To protect the land, we need to protect birds.

Because birds are of the most interest in anyone who cares for the outdoors, birds can lead the way to protecting the environment. But even the most enthusiastic bird watching groups, even those with substantial financial resources, cannot stop the unrelenting demand for more houses, more schools, more roads, and more yogurt shops.

In 1970 the population of the United States stood at about 200 million people. Today is it 329 million. In 40 years, 30 percent more people, 30 percent fewer birds. Makes sense, but it’s terrifying.

2 thoughts on “Birds are Disappearing”

Are 4G and 5G towers, which emit radiation, affecting the birds and driving them away?

Is the radiation affecting the birds? There’s no evidence for that. They might fly into a tower, but natural radiation from the sun puts out 33 times as much as a 5G tower. Even your microwave puts out twice as much. Nope, birds are disappearing due to climate change and habitat destruction, mostly.

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Home :: Bird Behavior: Bird Language Basics

Bird Behavior: Bird Language Basics

Listening to birds and watching bird behavior allows us to become aware of animal activity, to sneak up on wildlife or unsuspecting friends, and to enhance our senses. In my year at Wilderness Awareness School’s Immersion program, in Duvall, Washington, I explored the school’s teachings about birds, bird watching, and awareness. Here I’ll share some bird language basics with you. Soon, you’ll be able to tell when a hawk is about to fly out of the trees or when a deer is sneaking away from you.

What is Bird Language?

Birds make noises and behaviors to communicate with each other, and we can learn to understand what they are “talking” about. Patience and observation are really all it takes, even though a field guide will come in handy. You don’t have to identify birds in order to understand their voices. As you get to know the birds around you, you will be able to intuit their language, the same way you can tell when a close friend is happy or upset just from how that person answers the phone.

You might not need to know the names of the birds, but you should know something about their habits in order to understand their voices. The birds with the most to say about other animals traveling on the ground are the birds that live on the ground. A tiny warbler or chickadee, up in the treetops, might not care if a coyote is traveling underneath it, but a song sparrow will certainly notice when a coyote is passing through their thicket.

The general rule is that small brown birds that live near the ground will tell you the most. There are a lot of birds out there, but don’t start out by trying to learn them all. The perching birds, known as the passerines, have the most reliable voices. These are birds like sparrows, wrens, or blackbirds. In contrast, woodpeckers, herons, ducks, or hawks are not passerines.Here’s the shortlist of helpful birds:

• American robin ( Turdus migratorius )
• Song sparrow ( Melospiza melodia )
• Dark-eyed junco ( Junco hyemalis )
• A local wren
• A local towhee

If any of these birds don’t live near you, follow the general rule about finding perching birds that forage on the ground. The first owl or house cat that ventures into your backyard will show you the birds to pay attention to.

You will have to gauge the “trustworthiness” of your birds. The species above are reliable, but jays or crows, in the corvid family, can lead you astray with their seemingly random squawking. I snuck up on a yelling jay family, only to hear them shut up completely when they caught sight of me. I still think they were pulling my leg.

Despite their unpredictability, you can use the bird behavior of crows and jays to find owls and hawks. Corvids seem to have a special dislike for these predators, so a stationary mob of noisy crows might indicate a raptor.

When you have found your five reliable ground-feeding passerines, you can start to distinguish the vocalizations they use in different situations. It’s the same concept as being able to tell the difference between someone yelling for help and someone singing.

Let’s dive into the five basic “voices” that birds use. Most bird noises will fall into these categories. The first four are baseline or business-as-usual voices, and the last one is about alarm.

Song is the best-known noise that birds make. Male birds sing a lot in the spring, and sometimes all year round. If a bird is relaxed and safe enough to be singing, there probably aren’t any predators nearby. The song is the vocalization usually heard on bird identification tapes, and you may see the bird singing from an exposed perch.

Companion calling is the second voice of the birds. These are the sounds that birds make to keep track of their flock mates or “spouses.” Usually, it’s a dialogue of soft chips or tweets. Translated into human speech, it might be akin to the calm murmur of voices in a restaurant. The rhythm is conversational and regular. You might see a pair of towhees flicking their tails periodically as a visual signal to each other, or a flock of robins moving in unison, making soft whistles.

The third voice is juvenile begging , and it’s usually heard in the springtime when baby birds have turned into hungry teenagers. The parents feed them because if they don’t shut these babies up, a predator will hear them. While the young bird’s cries may sound strangled and horrible, that’s just the sound of another juicy morsel being shoved down the hatch. Most baby birds flutter their wings and open their beaks wide as they plead for food. The repetitive whining may be obnoxious, but don’t mistake it for distress.

The fourth voice, aggression , also sounds gruesome but it does not indicate a predator in the area. You might have observed two male robins or mockingbirds staking their claims to opposite sides of the yard. There is plenty of flapping and squawking, but other birds don’t pay attention. Sometimes female birds will help their mates defend territory, so this bird behavior isn’t confined to males.

We’re about to hear the fifth voice, alarm . Look at the lawn, the park, the forest, or the field where all the birds are singing and feeding. That is baseline bird behavior. Now a hawk flies over, a jogger comes through, or a bobcat creeps from behind a bush. The birds cross from comfort into distress, and you will notice behavior that is not like their relaxed feeding or preening. The actual noise the bird makes may not be very different from its companion call, but the emotion behind it will feel agitated rather than calm.

A song sparrow might be up out of its thicket, chipping nervously. Maybe a flock of robins will squeal and dive for cover, telling you that a sharp-shinned hawk is on the prowl. Certain behaviors, like wiping the bill on a branch, can also signal agitation. Recognizing the baseline is essential for being able to recognize alarm.

Different animals and events will cause different alarm sequences, so it can be difficult to determine what each bird is actually responding to. Your common sense is the best guide for deciphering the birds’ reactions. For instance, a predator on the ground will cause birds to move up farther than that predator can jump, while an aerial predator like a hawk will cause the birds to dive down into cover.

With practice and knowledge of your local wildlife, bird language will indicate what kind of predator is causing the disturbance. Think of how each kind of animal moves. A bobcat or housecat that slinks along will collect a little following of alarmed birds. The sound of the alarms will travel slowly through the forest as some birds join in and others leave as the cat moves through their territories. A fast-moving dog or coyote will cause birds to “popcorn” up, just a few birds at a time popping up and alarming. A perched owl or hawk will draw a mob of calling birds that stay in one place. A bird-eating hawk, like the sharp-shinned, Cooper’s, or goshawk, will cause a dramatic duck-and-cover disappearing act.

Interestingly, bird responses to humans seem to vary. If you are using bird language to detect approaching humans, you must factor in the habitat and the attitude of the person. Are you in a park where the birds are used to people? Is the person stomping along in a bad mood, or strolling without a care in the world?

I tried to move quietly and sneakily out to my bird-watching spot, only to hear towhees and robins make unflattering comments about me—”Who is this person sneaking around here?” Now I stroll in whistling a tune, and the birds seem more relaxed. After all, I am exhibiting baseline behavior.

It’s not uncommon for birds to be quiet around feeding deer, but then start to alarm when the deer begins sneaking away. Perhaps the deer is sneaking away from you as you are coming down the trail, so listen for these peripheral or secondary bird alarms. The more you can expand your hearing and awareness, the more you will be able to see and experience.

Once you tune into the attitudes and nuances of bird behavior, you will often be warned when animals are nearby. This is how deer and other wary creatures use bird language to hide from approaching humans. Sometimes it’s the other way around! I was sitting in my yard early one morning and heard Spider-Eater the winter wren give an annoyed twitter. The pair of song sparrows (Big Gray and Tan-Stripe) chimed in a moment later. Something was moving towards me, and moving fast! I barely had time to pull my camouflaged blanket over my face, leaving a peephole so I could watch the big coyote trot past, thirty feet away.

If you are intrigued by these stories, try some of the activities that I find helpful when learning about bird language.

I always strive to develop the ability to recognize individuals. Dr. Doolittle (the character in the old books I read as a kid) said that if you saw two sparrows in a tree, and could recognize the same two sparrows the next day, you were observant enough to learn to speak to animals. The surest route to understanding birds is to spend time each day at the same place—a place that has birds around. A backyard is perfect. Draw a map of where you see regularly see the same birds. In my backyard, Chirpy the wren always sings from the south ridge, but Spider-Eater sings from the north ridge. Springtime makes territory boundaries and songs clearer, so that’s a good time to get out there and use your ears.

You might find a place to position yourself along a human trail to listen for the birds to tell you when someone is coming by. Soon you will be able to tell if a hiker, jogger, rider, or cyclist is about to come around the corner. I wouldn’t try to win any bets about guessing it, though! Birds have a talent for humbling us. It’s also best not to scare any humans.

If you are listening to bird CDs, focus on the birds of your area. Listen to them over and over, and act them out. How does the robin run across the yard? How does the blue jay flip its tail around? How does the great horned owl turn its golden-eyed head? Put yourself in the bird’s feathers and you will be able to understand bird language.

This is a brief overview of a complex topic. Whether you simply notice more birds than you did before or learn every bird in your neighborhood, prick up your ears at the world of sound that surrounds us. Birds are bound to lift your spirits with the mysteries and delight of bird language.

For a deeper dive into Bird Language, I would highly recommend What the Robin Knows by Jon Young, or if you live in Western Washington, please consider coming to our free monthly Bird Language Club !

The Lost Words: An Illustrated Dictionary of Poetic Spells Reclaiming the Language of Nature

By maria popova.

“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf’s melodious voice unspools in the only surviving recording of her speech — a 1937 love letter to language. “In each word, all words,” the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot writes a generation later as he considers the dual power of language to conceal and to reveal . But because language is our primary sieve of perception, our mightiest means of describing what we apprehend and thus comprehending it, words also belong to that which they describe — or, rather, they are the conduit of belonging between us and the world we perceive. As the bryologist and Native American storyteller Robin Wall Kimmerer observed in her poetic meditation on moss , “finding the words is another step in learning to see.” Losing the words, then, is ceasing to see — a peculiar and pervasive form of blindness that dulls the shimmer of the world, a disability particularly dangerous to the young imagination just learning to apprehend the world through language.

In early 2015, when the 10,000-entry Oxford children’s dictionary dropped around fifty words related to nature — words like fern , willow , and starling — in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste , some of the world’s most prominent authors composed an open letter of protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children’s vocabulary and its consequent diminishment of children’s belonging to and with the natural world. Among them was one of the great nature writers of our time: Robert Macfarlane — a rare descendent from the lyrical tradition of Rachel Carson and Henry Beston , and the visionary who rediscovered and brought to life the stunning forgotten writings of the Scottish mountaineer and poet Nan Shepherd.

Troubled by this loss of vital and vitalizing language, MacFarlane teamed up with illustrator and children’s book author Jackie Morris , who had reached out to him to write an introduction for a sort of “wild dictionary” she wanted to create as a counterpoint to Oxford’s erasure. Instead, Macfarlane envisioned something greater. The Lost Words: A Spell Book ( public library ) was born — an uncommonly wondrous and beguiling act of resistance to the severance of our relationship with the rest of nature, a rerooting into this living world in which, in the words of the great naturalist John Muir, “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” just as each word is hitched to all words and to the entire web of being.

While children’s experience is at the heart of this quiet masterpiece, MacFarlane and Morris intended the large, lavishly illustrated book for “children aged 3 to 100” — a book “to conjure back the common words and species that are steadily disappearing from everyday life — and especially from children’s stories and dreams,” a book “to catch at the beauty and wonder — but also the eeriness and otherness — of the natural world.” What emerges is a lyrical encyclopedia of enchantments, radiating the sensibility of classical natural history illustration but illustrating a more natural future for the generations ahead.

Each word occupies three lavishly illustrated spreads: a poetic “summoning spell” in the form of an acrostic to conjure back the lost word in a rhythmic incantation composed to be read aloud, a wordless visual eulogy for its vanishment, and a typographic botany of letters spelling it “back into language, hearts, minds and landscape.”

Half a century after Rachel Carson painted in the opening of her epoch-making book Silent Spring a dystopian future bereft of birdsong, Macfarlane opens with an image of a world — this world — bereft of the words for birds (and plants, and other beings), and thus bereft of the regard for and concern with them:

Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no one noticed — fading away like water on stone. The words were those that children used to name the natural world around them: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker — gone! Fern, heather, kingfisher, otter, raven, willow, wren… all of them gone! The words were becoming lost: no longer vivid in children’s voices, no longer alive in their stories. You hold in your hands a spellbook for conjuring back these lost words. To read it you will need to seek, find and speak. It deals in things that are missing and things that are hidden, in absences and in appearances. It is told in gold — the gold of the goldfinches that flit through its pages in charms — and it holds not poems but spells of many kinds that might just, by the old, strong magic of being spoken aloud, unfold dreams and songs, and summon lost words back into the mouth and the mind’s eye.

Complement The Lost Words , the splendor and enchantment of which no digital screen can convey, with Susan Sontag on the conscience of words and Walt Whitman on the wisdom of trees , then revisit the lovely Lost in Translation — an illustrated dictionary of beautifully untranslatable words from around the world.

— Published June 17, 2019 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/06/17/the-lost-words-macfarlane-morris/ —

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Communication

• Calls and Songs
• Dialects in Bird Songs
• Plumage and Coloring
• Displays and Postures
• Feeding Behaviors
• Mating and Breeding
• Social Structures
• Learning and Intelligence
• Sleeping Habits and Behavior
• Bathing & Preening
• Human Interaction
• Overview of Bird Communication
• Understanding Bird Communication
• Vocal Communication
• Visual Communication
• Intricacies of Bird Communication

You may have seen viral videos of parrots, parakeets, or mynah birds that have mastered the art of ‘speech’ and marveled at the extensive vocabulary some of these birds show off.

In reality, there is a whole lot more to bird communication than mimicry and repetition of human voices, and many species have developed highly complex methods of interacting with each other.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you’re in the right place, so read on!

Budgerigars (pictured) are sociable, well-natured, intelligent, easy to train, and capable of advanced vocal mimicry

Birds are highly communicative and have evolved to find ways to send messages to each other to signal alarm, distress, territorial defense, contact between pairs and young, and the need for food.

Some species have the ability to make over a thousand different sounds – the Brown Thrasher and Nightingale , for example, are recorded to have a playlist of at least a thousand distinct tunes.

But communication between birds is not limited to birdsong or other calls and vocalizations.

Watch closely and you’ll notice that birds also use visual clues with each other to communicate, for example, displaying during the breeding season to attract a mate or posturing and fluffing their feathers to appear dominant and to deter predators.

The Significance of Studying Bird Communication

By studying bird communication, it’s possible to develop a greater understanding of how birds survive and interact, their role in the wider ecosystems in which they live, how other wildlife species live alongside each other, and factors that affect their survival and longevity in their natural habitats.

Perhaps the most obvious need for communication is related to survival, with shrill alarm calls or rapid squawking frequently heard when a threat is detected around a nest site, alerting a mate or other nearby bird of danger and attempting to intimidate and scare off any intruders that are approaching.

Communication is also crucial during the breeding season when pairs form ahead of raising young. Prospective mates need to communicate their interests and availability to each other and do this in a number of ways, including vocally, visually, and with their actions.

Some species like the Nightingale (pictured) have the ability to make over a thousand different sounds

Studying the ways in which birds communicate helps us to understand how they survive, how they interact with their own species, and how they form pairs, raise young, and defend territories.

This kind of knowledge can only be gained through in-depth study and observation, and many hours of expert research over the centuries have helped us to begin to decode what birds are actually ‘saying’ to each other and why. Keep reading to learn more!

Defining Bird Communication

Bird communication focuses on the different ways that avians interact with each other, methods they use to stay in contact with mates, young and flock mates, and how they signal danger, alarm, warning, territorial ownership, and potential interest in mating.

Early observations of birdsong were limited to handwritten notes and individual interpretations or transcriptions of calls and melodies.

Technological advances have allowed audio recordings to be made, which have been analyzed and studied alongside video observations of behavior and environment. This has led to a much deeper understanding of what different sounds represent and a wider understanding of how birds communicate.

Robins are surprisingly aggressive little birds who will defend their territory from other robins

Types of Communication

Vocal communication can be broken down into songs and calls, which are usually separated according to the message and function of the vocalization.

Song is usually a tuneful melody of notes or phrases and is used primarily to attract a mate or assert a claim to a territory. Calls are usually shorter sounds or single notes and are used to keep in touch with flock mates, communicate danger, or deter predators.

Visual communication involves birds using their plumage or posture to get a clear message across to potential mates or rivals, to reinforce either their availability for breeding or their status as strong, intimidating individuals and a warning not to enter their territory or approach their nest site.

Head bobbing , crest-raising, wing shaking, and showing off their brightest coloring are all common forms of non-vocal bird body language.

A less-researched form of communication is birds’ use of chemical signals to interact with each other. Petrels, Auks, and some ducks are thought to use specific scents to communicate with each other. Tactile communication may also be used between pairs to strengthen their bonds, for example, Puffin mates rubbing their bills together or allopreening (mutual grooming) in penguins , parrots, and corvids.

Pictured: A pair of Puffins - they strengthen their bond by rubbing their beaks together

It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without birdsong, but have you ever paused to think about just why birds sing and what it means?

Song isn’t the only form of vocal communication that birds use. Shorter, single-note calls, shrill whistles, or harsh cawing may also be used to communicate alarm, distress, or warning.

Learn more about the types of vocalizations made by birds and what they might represent.

Song is vital to the reproductive behavior of birds, with it being the first tool males use to catch the attention of a prospective mate. Birdsong covers a diverse range of musical approaches, including short repetitive phrases, melodious warblings, and long and complex note patterns.

Song Sparrows and Song Thrushes have distinctive melodious songs heard from treetops early in the breeding season, while Nightingales are known the world over for their wide repertoire of delicate tunes.

By singing loudly and prominently, birds make their presence known, which helps to establish and maintain boundaries to a territory, and to claim access to feeding grounds and any females that may be nearby, meaning that other birds get the message loud and clear whose patch they are on.

Bird songs can be complex, and may include two different sounds that are produced at the same time. A particularly tuneful bird with a wide range of melodies is a sign of a healthy bird, indicating to a female that they are a good prospect and will be strong enough to defend a territory from threats.

The Song Sparrow (pictured) and Song Thrush have a distinctive melodious song

Birds use calls as a method of staying in close contact when feeding, flying, raising young, and avoiding predators. Contact calls help birds stay in touch while foraging or flying or enable parents to check in on their chicks’ whereabouts. These sounds are relatively quiet to avoid attracting the unwanted attention of predators.

Alarm calls, warning calls, and distress calls are harsh and loud, heard in situations where an immediate danger is sensed, such as a nearby cat or bird of prey. Rapid loud squawking or harsh, piercing chatter alerts other birds to the threat, and may also drive away the intruder, once they realize they have been noticed.

Learning and Development of Vocalizations

Have you ever wondered how a bird learns to sing those warbling tunes it belts out from the treetops? It’s a complicated process, and genetic and social factors are both involved.

Certain species are born with their vocalizations genetically pre-programmed and are capable of making basic sounds as soon as they hatch, which gradually develop into more complex songs and calls associated with their species.

Juvenile birds also master the songs they hear from their parents and other adults by mimicking the sounds they hear around them. Some species are talented mimics, and once they have accomplished the songs of their own species, will begin to build up a repertoire of mimicked songs learned from other species they encounter in the world around them.

A Sedge Warbler singing to attract a female during the breeding season

Communication isn’t all vocal, and appearance and stature are both vital in conveying indisputable messages to other nearby birds.

Read on to learn more about the role of plumage and coloring in bird communication.

Plumage has a vital function in courtship displays and mating rituals, with birds using their coloring to their advantage when seeking a mate.

Plumages are at their brightest during the early breeding season, and males use their brightest, most elaborate feathers to display strength and health to a potential mate. Peacocks are a striking example of how colorful plumage may be used to attract maximum attention.

The color red has a special significance in the avian world and is effective at both attracting mates and intimidating rivals. The scarlet shoulder patches of a red-winged blackbird are mostly hidden, but when singing they are displayed more obviously, with the hope of catching the eye of a potential mate.

As well as songs and calls, birds can use a variety of non-vocal methods to communicate simple messages. Movements and gestures are used by birds to indicate threat and defense, attraction and to assert their place in the pecking order at a foraging site.

The most common intimidatory postures used by birds in conflict situations include head-bobbing , wing flapping, and crest-raising.

Any stature that makes a bird appear larger and more fierce may be attempted, particularly in defense of a nest site or to drive away rival birds from entering a territory.

Peacocks are a striking example of how colorful plumage may be used to attract maximum attention

As well as learning to recognize the songs and vocalizations of different bird species, those with a particularly keen ear may be able to learn to differentiate between birds of the same species, picking up on regional ‘dialects’ or instances of birds of one species engaging in interactive communication with birds of different species. Read on to discover more.

Just like in human language, there are variations in birdsong among different regions and different populations. Researchers have noted that birds living in cities and towns have a higher-pitched song than their rural counterparts.

In the US, the white-crowned sparrow is a well-known example of this, with clear regional ‘accent’ variations present even within different parts of Washington State.

Within the UK, studies showed that Blackbirds , Chaffinches , and Great Tits sounded different in the northern parts of the country from those in the south.

Yellowhammers introduced to New Zealand from the UK around 150 years ago have a slightly different song to those found in the UK today.

Inter-Species Communication

Birds will communicate with other species when they feel under threat, both in defense of themselves, their territories, and their young, and also in warning to other birds when danger is detected nearby.

When a bird senses a threat or rival approaching, it will often try to make itself appear larger in size to intimidate. Young owls are a great example of this behavior, spreading their wings and fluffing out their feathers.

When not under direct threat themselves, but when a predator is noticed nearby, alarm calls may be issued that alert all neighborhood birds to be vigilant.

Pictured: A Great Tit on the top of a fence singing

There’s a lot more to bird communication than a few simple tweets, squawks or whistles. A trained ear can learn to differentiate between the nuances of different calls, combinations or repetition of note sequences or phrases and what they might mean.

Watch out for the non-vocal signals that birds send each other to communicate danger, threat, pair bonds, interest in courtship and territory ownership.

How do birds communicate?

Birds produce a phenomenal array of different sounds, from high-pitched whistles to deep hooting and everything in between. All of these sounds are made to communicate something to other members of their species. Birds have a second and arguably even more diverse way of communicating, however, Birds communicate with their bodies through movement, color, and feather development.

Can birds communicate with other species?

Birds have very little reason to communicate with other species, but there are a few occasions when this ability really comes in handy.

Birds can communicate with other species when they feel threatened. When a bird is under attack, it will often attempt to make itself look larger and more intimidating to deter its attacker. Birds often do this by spreading their wings and puffing out their feathers. Young owls are a great example of this behavior.

While attempting to look more visually threatening, birds will also produce alarm and distress calls, shrieks, and even hissing sounds. Birds also produce alarm calls when they are not under direct threat and this helps to alert other birds in the area.

Birds of many different species will come to investigate alarm calls, so they clearly understand the message!

How do birds communicate over long distances?

Birds can use songs and calls to communicate over long distances. This form of communication has many benefits. For example, birds don’t have to be able to see each other, which comes in handy in dense environments like forests and swamps, or after dark. Communicating over long distances with sound also allows birds to stay concealed and safe from predators.

How far can birds communicate?

The distance that bird calls and songs can carry depends on factors like the surrounding environment, weather conditions, call volume, and frequency. Simple, low-frequency calls such as those produced by ostriches and cassowaries are best for long-distance communication.

Owl hoots tend to travel long distances because of their low frequency and the still conditions at night when interference is low. Owls often occupy large territories, and they have excellent hearing for detecting the calls of their neighbors. Snowy owls, for example, often hold territories of over a thousand acres and can be heard from distances of up to 7 miles.

Do birds tell each other where food is?

Birds usually find food by sight, but they are also highly tuned in to the sounds of other birds. The excited calls of birds around a feeder or natural food source are probably very attractive to other curious and hungry birds in the area.

How do birds communicate in flight?

Many birds like Swainson's thrushes migrate at night in groups and flocks. This helps them avoid predators and leaves them with less wind to contend with. So how do they avoid crashing into each other and even other birds moving in different directions? The solution is to make soft, regular calls that help the birds maintain their spacing and ensure that everyone is traveling in the same direction.

How do birds communicate visually?

Birds communicate both passively and actively. Passive communication is involuntary and controlled by hormones like testosterone and the genetic traits of an individual. The bright-colored plumage that many male birds develop around the breeding season is a classic example of this, but birds also grow longer feathers or change colors on their legs, and around their bills and eyes.

Active communication involves certain postures, movements, feather manipulation, and flight patterns. Head bobbing displays between two territorial northern flickers, or the beautiful dance of sharp-tailed grouses on the American prairie are just two fine examples of visual communication.

How do birds communicate with humans?

Wild birds do not usually communicate with humans, but pet birds certainly do. Pet birds often communicate vocally and visually in ways that their attentive owners can learn to understand. There are some interesting cases in the bird world where wild birds communicate with humans, however.

The Greater Honeyguide of Africa actively communicates with people to guide them to the location of honey. The birds use special calls and movements to capture the attention of humans, and amazingly, they also respond to being called by people. By guiding people to bees' nests, the birds get access to the wax that they feed on.

Can birds communicate with their babies?

Parent birds generally do not communicate with their babies in any obvious ways. One interesting example of a parent bird communicating with its young can be seen in seagulls, however. The red spot on the bill of adult seagulls serves as a passive message to the babies to beg for food. The babies instinctively know to peck at the red spot and will not attempt to feed from a bird without the red spot.

If you’ve ever been near a nest full of hungry chicks , you will know that baby birds certainly communicate with their parents. The message is simple, feed me!

Baby birds make simple vocalizations to send this message but they also use visual communication to encourage their parent to produce the goods. Many baby birds have brightly colored inner surfaces in their mouths. Opening their mouths and displaying these colors encourages their parents to feed them.

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Why can some birds talk like humans?

Birds like parrots and mynah birds have the remarkable ability to mimic human speech. This sets them apart from most other animals, who do not have the anatomy or cognitive skills required for vocal learning. But what exactly allows certain avian species to talk like us? Here we’ll explore the physical and neurological adaptations that enable vocal mimicry in birds.

Physical adaptations

The foremost requirement for mimicking speech is a complex vocal apparatus. Most birds possess a syrinx, an organ located at the junction of the trachea and bronchi. The syrinx contains vibratory tissues and muscles that allow birds to produce a wide range of vocalizations. Parrots, songbirds, hummingbirds and some other avian species have more intricate syringeal structures with multiple sets of muscles, giving them excellent control over their vocal output.

Birds like parrots also have a large brain relative to their body size compared to other bird species. Their brains have developed specific regions analogous to the human cortex and specialized for processing language and speech. African grey parrots for example have neural circuits connecting auditory regions to motor control regions which facilitates vocal learning.

Certain parrot species have tongues that are more muscular and flexible compared to other birds. This allows them to articulate sounds better by moving their tongue independently. The shape of their vocal tract, throat, beak and mouth also influence speech clarity in parrots. Overall, a combination of anatomical adaptations enables some birds to mimic human vocalizations to an impressive degree.

Language and speech skills

Besides physical adaptations, talking birds also display an advanced ability to process and understand language. Parrots like the African grey parrot have been shown to learn words and their meanings when interacting with humans. Some birds even combine words meaningfully to form simple sentences. This shows they have cognitive skills analogous to what humans leverage to learn speech.

Pet birds learn to associate words and phrases with meanings, much like human babies do. Wild talking birds pick up vocalizations from flock members and other species in their habitat. They have neural circuits that allow them to memorize and reproduce complex novel sounds through imitation. Tests show parrots can mimic words even when they don’t fully comprehend them.

Talking birds perceiving new sounds also exhibit vocal learning – their brain maps between perceived sounds and motor instructions to their syrinx to mimic those sounds. Songbirds demonstrate this ability when they modify their songs after exposure to new sounds. The capacity for vocal learning is crucial for speech development in humans too.

Social benefits

Mimicking human speech likely offers social benefits to birds living around humans. Household pets repeat words and phrases which draws attention from their owners. Wild parrots incorporate sounds of human speech into their contact calls to inform flock members about new things they have learned.

Some birds may mimic speech hoping to interact with humans for obtaining food rewards or caregiving. Repeating human words becomes a tool for captive birds to communicate interest, displeasure or needs more effectively to their owners. The social motivation to bond facilitates vocal mimicry.

Speech and cognition

The ability to imitate human vocalizations is tied to advanced cognitive abilities in parrots. Studies show African grey parrots can categorize objects, count items, understand shapes/colors/materials and even solve puzzles. Such birds also have long-term memory comparable to human children.

Parrots and songbirds can learn abstract rules and patterns critical for language development. Wild Kea parrots in New Zealand have shown advanced reasoning skills for solving logical puzzles. Talking birds thus have more sophisticated intelligence compared to other animals, enabling them to use speech more creatively.

However, birds still lack a true language culture comparable to humans. Their speech mostly reflects mimicking of individual words and set phrases rather than generative language use. But some parrots have shown ability to combine words innovatively and use speech contextually in social settings.

Brain pathways

Neuroscientists have identified certain pathways in a parrot’s brain that mediate vocal mimicry ability. The auditory cortex and song system in parrots are connected via robust neural circuits to motor centers that control the vocal organs. This allows them to hear a sound and reproduce it using learned motor patterns.

Regions analogous to the human Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area involved in speech processing have been identified in parrot brains. Neuroimaging shows parrots may also have similar brain connectivity that facilitates spoken language learning in human children.

Researchers are still studying how speech and language areas mature in parrot brains during the learning process. Identifying vocal pathways in bird brains promises to provide insight into neurobiology of human speech as well.

Critical periods

Studies on vocal learning in birds show parrots have critical periods early in life when they acquire speech best. During this sensory learning period, young parrots are especially adept at picking up new sounds. Fledgling birds exposed to human speech mimic and memorize words most readily.

However, parrots continue to be able to learn new words even in adulthood, unlike most songbirds. Their capacity for vocal learning thus declines but does not disappear entirely with maturity. Understanding developmental phases of speech learning in parrots is key to training them successfully.

Speech perception

Researchers have studied how parrots perceive and process human speech sounds. Birds rely on similar acoustic features like intensity, pitch, frequency modulations and rhythm that humans use for distinguishing speech sounds.

Brain scans reveal parrots have dedicated neural networks for processing complex spectral and temporal patterns in speech. African grey parrots can categorize speech sounds, an ability that lays the foundation for vocabulary acquisition. Such speech sound discrimination is seen in human infants too during language development.

However, parrots may not perceive nuances of human speech the same way people do. More studies are needed to fully understand how talking birds encode speech, including vowel and consonant distinctions, using their specialized auditory system and brain pathways.

Limitations

While talking birds demonstrate impressive speech mimicry, their vocalizations still have limitations compared to human language. Parrots and mynahs mostly repeat memorized words and phrases rather than generating novel meaningful speech.

The birds rely on rote auditory memory without full semantic understanding. Their usage lacks grammar, syntax and other rules for organizing language. Wild parrots incorporate human sounds in their contact calls but don’t have conversant language abilities.

However, some birds like Alex, an African grey parrot studied by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, have shown ability to combine words logically and answer questions about objects coherently. But such examples of higher speech cognition are rare in birds.

A few bird groups like parrots, songbirds and hummingbirds demonstrate vocal mimicry of human speech sounds. Their physical adaptations like specialized syrinx, tongue muscles and vocal tract allow articulation of words. Parrots additionally display cognitive skills like auditory processing, memory formation and vocal learning critical for speech imitation.

While talking birds may not comprehend semantics or syntax fully, their capacity for mimicking speech provides insight into evolution of speech pathways in the brain. Understanding the intelligence and biology behind vocal mimicry in birds continues to fascinate and inspire research.

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How to Describe Birds in Writing (17 Best Tips & Examples)

Let’s spread our creative wings together and explore the art of describing birds in our writing.

Here is how to describe birds in writing:

Describe birds in writing by focusing on their feathers, songs, movements, and behaviors. Use vivid words like “iridescent” or phrases like “wings slicing the air”. Employ sensory descriptions, symbolic meanings, and cultural contexts to bring avian characters to life in your narratives.

Keep reading to learn everything you need to know to write about birds in your stories.

Types of Birds in Writing

Table of Contents

Birds, with their vast diversity and striking characteristics, offer a rich palette for writers to paint vibrant scenes and convey emotions.

From tiny, flitting hummingbirds to majestic eagles soaring high, each bird carries its own symbolism and narrative potential.

In this section, we’ll explore a variety of bird types, each with a brief description that captures their essence, providing a broad canvas for writers to draw inspiration from.

• Sparrows – Small and unassuming, sparrows symbolize simplicity and the joy found in everyday life.
• Eagles – Majestic and powerful, eagles are often used to depict freedom, strength, and a bird’s-eye perspective on life.
• Hummingbirds – Tiny and energetic, hummingbirds represent joy, agility, and the incredible beauty of small things.
• Owls – Mysterious and wise, owls often symbolize knowledge, the unseen, and the secrets of the night.
• Robins – Cheerful and common, robins are harbingers of spring and symbols of renewal and new beginnings.
• Peacocks – Vibrant and flamboyant, peacocks epitomize beauty, pride, and the splendor of nature.
• Crows – Intelligent and adaptable, crows often represent transformation, adaptability, and the mysteries of life.
• Pigeons – Ubiquitous and resilient, pigeons are seen as symbols of peace, love, and the persistence of life in urban landscapes.
• Swans – Graceful and elegant, swans are often used to represent love, purity, and the beauty of monogamy.
• Canaries – Bright and vocal, canaries symbolize happiness, the power of voice, and sometimes, a warning.
• Penguins – Endearing and unique, penguins represent adaptability, survival, and the joys of companionship.
• Flamingos – Striking and social, flamingos symbolize balance, community, and embracing one’s uniqueness.
• Parrots – Colorful and vocal, parrots often stand for communication, mimicry, and the vibrancy of the tropics.
• Vultures – Misunderstood scavengers, vultures symbolize cleansing, renewal, and the cycle of life.
• Doves – Gentle and serene, doves are universally recognized as emblems of peace, hope, and spiritual messengers.
• Hawks – Focused and fierce, hawks represent vision, power, and the ability to navigate life’s challenges.
• Seagulls – Noisy and free-spirited, seagulls embody the spirit of the sea, freedom, and a carefree lifestyle.
• Woodpeckers – Persistent and rhythmic, woodpeckers symbolize determination, opportunity, and the heartbeat of the forest.
• Cardinals – Vibrant and spirited, cardinals represent vitality, faith, and the beauty of year-round color.
• Blue Jays – Bold and vocal, blue jays symbolize assertiveness, intelligence, and the vibrancy of life.

17 Best Tips for Describing Birds in Writing

Describing birds in your writing can be a mesmerizing way to add depth, texture, and symbolism.

Whether it’s the delicate flutter of a sparrow or the majestic soar of an eagle, birds can bring a unique dimension to your narrative.

Here are 17 bird-themed tips to help you weave vivid avian imagery into your writing.

Each tip is explored in detail, offering you the tools to make your descriptions take flight.

1. Feathered Flourish – Focus on Feathers

Feathers define birds. When describing them, delve into their color, texture, and what they reveal about the bird’s persona.

For example, depicting a sparrow’s feathers could go beyond mere color.

You might say, “The sparrow’s feathers seemed brushed by twilight; each a small canvas capturing the soft glow of the setting sun.”

This not only paints a vivid picture but also introduces a sensory aspect.

It links the bird to the broader canvas of the natural world, allowing readers to feel the warmth, see the hues, and sense the bird’s place in the world.

This attention to detail can turn a simple description into an evocative image that stays with the reader.

2. Melodic Metaphors – Use Birdsong

Birdsong is more than a sound; it’s an emotion.

When describing it, use metaphors and similes to create an emotional connection.

Rather than saying a robin chirps, you might describe its song as “a melody rippling like a gentle brook, cutting through the quiet of dawn.”

This method transcends mere auditory description.

It paints a picture, sets a mood, and plunges the reader into a moment.

It’s about crafting a scene that’s almost palpable, using the bird’s song as a tool to transport the reader to that tranquil morning, where they can almost feel the coolness of the dawn and the serenity it brings.

3. Winged Whimsy – Capture Movement

A bird’s movement can be highly expressive.

Whether it’s an eagle’s dignified glide or a hummingbird’s frenetic dance, capturing this can add dynamism to your writing.

Consider a description like, “The hummingbird hovered in the air, its wings a blur, as if stitching the very fabric of time.”

This kind of imagery does more than describe movement.

It infuses the bird with a magical quality, making it a creature not just of feathers and flight but of wonder and fantasy.

Descriptions like this elevate the bird from a mere creature to a symbol, a bearer of meaning, and an entity that transcends the ordinary.

4. Aerial Acrobatics – Highlight Flight Patterns

Flight patterns can reveal a lot about a bird’s nature and the mood of a scene.

For instance, describing an eagle’s flight can convey majesty and power.

You might write, “The eagle ascended with a regal ease, each wingbeat a testament to its dominion over the skies.”

This goes beyond the physical act of flying. It touches on the eagle’s symbolic power, portraying it as a ruler of its realm.

It’s about capturing the grace, the strength, and the sheer majesty of its flight.

Descriptions like these can elevate your narrative, turning a simple action into a powerful metaphor that reflects broader themes or emotions in your writing.

5. Nest Narratives – Describe Bird Habitats

Bird habitats can set the scene and context for your narrative.

Describing a nest, a tree hollow, or even a cliff ledge can add authenticity.

You could say, “The sparrow’s nest, a woven tapestry of twigs and leaves, cradled the tree’s nook, a testament to nature’s ingenuity.”

This type of description does more than just portray a physical location.

It gives insight into the bird’s life and survival.

It can create a sense of intimacy, pulling the reader closer to the bird’s world, and highlighting the intricate connections between creatures and their environments.

6. Beak Banter – Focus on Vocalizations and Calls

Bird calls and vocalizations can be very expressive.

Describing these can add auditory texture to your writing. For example, instead of just stating a crow cawed, you could write, “The crow’s call was a harsh caw, echoing like a laugh across the empty fields.”

This captures the nature of the sound and its impact on the setting.

It’s not just about what the sound is, but how it resonates with the environment and the characters.

It can set a mood, be it ominous, cheerful, or soothing.

The key is to use these sounds not just as background noise, but as active elements that contribute to the atmosphere of your scene.

7. Plumage Palette – Explore Colors and Patterns

The colors and patterns of a bird’s plumage can be striking.

Describing these can add visual vibrancy to your narrative.

Take a peacock for example. Instead of simply stating its feathers are colorful, try, “The peacock’s tail unfurled like a kaleidoscopic fan, each feather a vibrant brushstroke of nature’s palette.”

This kind of description paints a vivid picture.

It turns the bird into a living work of art, inviting readers to visualize not just the colors, but the beauty and intricacy of the patterns.

It’s about capturing the awe and wonder such a sight can evoke, making the reader pause and appreciate the natural splendor.

8. Avian Antics – Capture Characterful Behavior

Birds often display unique and characterful behaviors that can enliven your writing.

Describing these antics provides insight into their personalities.

For example, a raven solving a puzzle or a bowerbird decorating its nest demonstrates intelligence and resourcefulness.

Writing such as, “The raven, with a click of its beak, nudged the puzzle piece into place, its black eyes glinting with a hint of glee,” invites readers into the bird’s world.

It’s about painting a fuller picture, showcasing birds not just as animals but as beings with their quirks, habits, and intelligence.

By bringing these behaviors to the fore, you can add another layer to your narrative and engage your readers on a deeper level.

9. Sensory Symphony – Engage All Senses

Engaging all the senses can make your bird descriptions more immersive.

Describe not just how a bird looks, but how its feathers feel, how its movement sounds, or even how its habitat smells.

For instance, “The duck’s feathers were a tapestry of textures, from the silkiness of its undercoat to the oil-slicked toughness of its outer quills.”

By involving multiple senses, you can create a richer, multi-dimensional portrayal of birds.

It’s about giving the reader a sense as if they’re experiencing the bird’s presence firsthand, making the encounter with the bird more vivid and memorable.

10. Behavioral Beacon – Signal Seasonal Changes

Bird behaviors often change with the seasons, and this can be a poignant aspect to capture.

Migratory patterns, mating dances, or nesting can signal the passage of time in your story.

Describing these seasonal behaviors, like “With the first blush of spring, the robin returned, its song a cheerful herald of warmer days,” can add layers of depth to your setting.

It aligns the life of birds with the rhythm of the natural world, providing a backdrop that can reflect changes in your story or the internal states of your characters.

11. Symbolic Soaring – Use Birds as Symbols

Birds have rich symbolic meanings across cultures.

They can symbolize freedom, hope, or even foreboding. Integrate these symbols into your writing to add a layer of meaning.

For example, an owl in a story might not only be a background creature but also a symbol of wisdom or a harbinger of change.

“The owl perched silently above, its presence a solemn reminder of the wisdom that comes with age and experience,” illustrates how you can weave symbolism into your description.

This allows the bird to embody deeper themes and resonate with the reader on a symbolic level.

12. Dynamic Duos – Contrast with Characters

Use birds to create contrast or to mirror your characters’ journeys.

A caged bird can reflect a character’s own trapped situation or desire for freedom.

For example, “As she watched the caged finch flutter against the bars, its plight echoed her own sense of confinement.”

This approach does more than depict the bird; it uses the bird as a reflection of the character’s emotions and circumstances, offering a powerful emotional connection and a mirror to human experiences.

13. Rhythmic Renderings – Mimic Bird Movement in Prose

The rhythm of your prose can reflect the movement of birds.

Long, flowing sentences can mimic the graceful soaring of a swan, while short, choppy sentences can echo the flitting of a finch.

For instance, “The heron glided over the water—a slow, seamless waltz—its reflection a ghostly dance partner below.”

By mirroring the rhythm of bird movements in your sentence structure, you provide the reader with a literary echo of the bird’s physical grace.

This creates a harmonious reading experience that’s almost like watching the bird in motion.

14. Habitat Harmony – Align Descriptions with Environment

Birds are deeply connected to their habitats, and reflecting this in your descriptions can add authenticity.

Describe how a bird interacts with its environment, like a woodpecker tapping into a tree or a seagull wheeling over the ocean.

You might write, “The woodpecker drummed against the old oak, a staccato rhythm that seemed to breathe life into the forest.”

Such descriptions root the bird in its setting, giving a sense of place and showing the interconnectedness of nature’s tapestry.

15. Perspective Play – Vary Your Viewpoint

Changing your narrative perspective can offer a fresh angle on bird descriptions.

Describe a bird from far away, then up close, or even from the bird’s perspective. For example, “From afar, the hawk was a mere speck against the vast blue. Up close, every feather was a detail in a masterpiece of evolution.”

This technique can add depth and scale to your descriptions, offering a richer visual experience and drawing readers into the scene more effectively.

16. Emotional Echo – Reflect Mood through Birds

Birds can be used to echo the emotional landscape of your story.

A joyful scene might be accompanied by the lively chatter of sparrows, while a somber moment could be underscored by the solitary call of a crow.

Writing that “The crows’ solemn cries seemed to mourn the day’s end, as shadows gathered in the silence,” can tie the atmosphere closely to the narrative, using the birds to deepen the emotional impact of your scenes.

17. Cultural Context – Weave in Folklore and Myth

Birds often have a place in folklore and myth, and tapping into these stories can add a layer of richness to your writing.

Integrate cultural stories or myths about birds to give your descriptions a deeper resonance.

“The raven, long a harbinger of fate in local lore, watched from atop the church spire, its black eyes knowing.”

This not only gives your bird descriptions a more profound significance but also ties them to the cultural and historical context of your setting.

Check out this video about how to describe birds in writing:

30 Best Words to Describe a Bird in Writing

Here are 30 of the best words to talk about birds in writing.

• Plumage-rich
• Resplendent

Each of these words holds the power to conjure a specific image or feeling about birds.

Use them to craft descriptions with precision and emotion.

Moving beyond single words, crafting phrases that reflect the nuanced behaviors and attributes of birds can add an evocative layer to your writing.

30 Best Phrases to Describe a Bird in Writing

The following phrases blend imagery and emotion, ideal for enhancing your narratives with finely-tuned bird descriptions:

• Wings slicing the air
• Beak glistening at dawn
• Tail feathers fanning out like rays of the sun
• Eyes gleaming with intelligence
• Song piercing the morning haze
• Silhouette against the twilight sky
• Claws gripping the branch with silent authority
• Nest cradled in the crook of a tree
• Feathers ruffled by the whispering wind
• Shadow flitting across the ground
• Plumage blending with the autumn leaves
• Beating wings stirring the calm air
• Calls echoing in the forest canopy
• Flight cutting through the mist
• Dance of courtship, intricate and full of zeal
• Reflection skimming the surface of the lake
• Perched like a sentinel atop the old pine
• Darting through the underbrush
• A flash of color in the verdant meadow
• Aloft in the updraft, effortlessly suspended
• A symphony of calls at dusk
• The soft cooing at day’s end
• Feathers coated in the morning’s dew
• A swift chase over the water’s surface
• Migratory arc etched across the sky
• Preening meticulously, every feather an artifact
• The sudden stillness before the strike
• A solitary silhouette on a weathered fence post
• Inquisitive gaze from within the thicket
• The serene float on a tranquil pond

3 Examples of How to Describe Birds in Writing (in three Different Genres)

Let’s look at examples of how to describe birds in writing in different kinds of stories.

Fantasy Genre: The Enchanted Eagle

In the twilight-shrouded realm of Eldoria, the Great Eagle, guardian of the Whispering Woods, unfurled its shimmering wings. Each feather shimmered with ethereal light, casting prismatic glows against the gnarled branches of the ancient trees. With eyes like molten gold piercing through the dusk, the creature let out a call that sang of ancient magic and secrets untold. Its talons, relics of a bygone era, grasped the mystical Stone of Sight, which pulsed in harmony with its heartbeat. The Eagle soared upwards, the air around it alive with whispers of enchantment, its majestic form a silhouette against the canvas of the constellations.

Mystery Genre: The Clue of the Crimson Cardinal

Detective Lila Grey stood motionless, the crunch of the autumn leaves underfoot breaking the silence of the morning. Her gaze fixed on the flash of red that flitted above the crime scene—a cardinal, its vibrant plumage a stark contrast to the somber mood. The bird’s keen eyes seemed to scrutinize the area, darting from the body to the blood-stained note left behind. As it sang a trilling melody, Lila pondered if the cardinal was an unwitting witness to the misdeed. The way it circled, almost protectively, around the oak tree, hinted at a secret only this avian bystander knew.

Romance Genre: The Dance of the Doves

Amidst the gentle hum of the garden party, two doves cooed softly, their gentle ballet a mirror to Eleanor and Thomas’s newfound love. The birds, with their silken white feathers, glided side by side, wings almost touching, embodying the tenderness shared between the two hearts below. As the pair nuzzled beak to beak, so too did Eleanor and Thomas lean in for their first, shy kiss, their audience of doves bearing witness to the silent promise of enduring affection. In the soft glow of dusk, the lovers and doves alike were wrapped in the warm embrace of a love as pure as the driven snow.

Final Thoughts: How to Describe Birds in Writing

With feathers unfurled and tales told, remember that the sky’s the limit when describing our avian friends in writing.

And if this flight of fancy has your creativity soaring, wing your way through our trove of articles for more literary inspiration.

Read This Next:

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• How to Describe a Train in Writing (30+ Words & Examples)
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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Research on Birds)

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For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System

A times investigation found climate change may now be a concern for every homeowner in the country..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. And this is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, my colleague, Christopher Flavelle, on a “Times” investigation into one of the least known and most consequential effects of climate change — insurance — and why it may now be a concern for every homeowner in the country.

It’s Wednesday, May 15.

So, Chris, you and I talked a while ago about how climate change was really wreaking havoc in the insurance market in Florida. You’ve just done an investigation that takes a look into the insurance markets more broadly and more deeply. Tell us about it.

Yeah, so I cover climate change, in particular the way climate shocks affect different parts of American life. And insurance has become a really big part of that coverage. And Florida is a great example. As hurricanes have gotten worse and more frequent, insurers are paying out more and more money to rebuild people’s homes. And that’s driving up insurance costs and ultimately driving up the cost of owning a home in Florida.

So we’re already seeing that climate impact on the housing market in Florida. My colleagues and I started to think, well, could it be that that kind of disruption is also happening in other states, not just in the obvious coastal states but maybe even through the middle of the US? So we set out to find out just how much it is happening, how much that Florida turmoil has, in fact, become really a contagion that is spreading across the country.

So how did you go about reporting this? I mean, where did you start?

All we knew at the start of this was that there was reason to think this might be a problem. If you just look at how the federal government tracks disasters around the country, there’s been a big increase almost every year in the number and severity of all kinds of disasters around the country. So we thought, OK, it’s worth trying to find out, what does that mean for insurers?

The problem is getting data on the insurance industry is actually really hard. There’s no federal regulation. There’s no government agency you can go to that holds this data. If you talk to the insurers directly, they tend to be a little reluctant to share information about what they’re going through. So we weren’t sure where to go until, finally, we realized the best people to ask are the people whose job it is to gauge the financial health of insurance companies.

Those are rating agencies. In particular, there’s one rating company called AM Best, whose whole purpose is to tell investors how healthy an insurance company is.

Whoa. So this is way down in the nuts and bolts of the US insurance industry.

Right. This is a part of the broader economy that most people would never experience. But we asked them to do something special for us. We said, hey, can you help us find the one number that would tell us reporters just how healthy or unhealthy this insurance market is state by state over time? And it turns out, there is just such a number. It’s called a combined ratio.

OK, plain English?

Plain English, it is the ratio of revenue to costs, how much money these guys take in for homeowner’s insurance and how much they pay out in costs and losses. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. If not, you’re in trouble.

So what did you find out?

Well, we got that number for every state, going back more than a decade. And what it showed us was our suspicions were right. This market turmoil that we were seeing in Florida and California has indeed been spreading across the country. And in fact, it turns out that in 18 states, last year, the homeowner’s insurance market lost money. And that’s a big jump from 5 or 10 years ago and spells real trouble for insurance and for homeowners and for almost every part of the economy.

So the contagion was real.

Right. This is our first window showing us just how far that contagion had spread. And one of the really striking things about this data was it showed the contagion had spread to places that I wouldn’t have thought of as especially prone to climate shocks — for example, a lot of the Midwest, a lot of the Southeast. In fact, if you think of a map of the country, there was no state between Pennsylvania and the Dakotas that didn’t lose money on homeowner’s insurance last year.

So just huge parts of the middle of the US have become unprofitable for homeowner’s insurance. This market is starting to buckle under the cost of climate change.

And this is all happening really fast. When we did the Florida episode two years ago, it was a completely new phenomenon and really only in Florida. And now it’s everywhere.

Yeah. And that’s exactly what’s so striking here. The rate at which this is becoming, again, a contagion and spreading across the country is just demolishing the expectations of anyone I’ve spoken to. No one thought that this problem would affect so much of the US so quickly.

So in these states, these new places that the contagion has spread to, what exactly is happening that’s causing the insurance companies to fold up shop?

Yeah. Something really particular is happening in a lot of these states. And it’s worth noting how it’s surprised everyone. And what that is, is formally unimportant weather events, like hailstorms or windstorms, those didn’t used to be the kind of thing that would scare insurance companies. Obviously, a big problem if it destroys your home or damages your home. But for insurers, it wasn’t going to wipe them out financially.

Right. It wasn’t just a complete and utter wipeout that the company would then have to pony up a lot of money for.

Exactly. And insurers call them secondary perils, sort of a belittling term, something other than a big deal, like a hurricane.

These minor league weather events.

Right. But those are becoming so frequent and so much more intense that they can cause existential threats for insurance companies. And insurers are now fleeing states not because of hurricanes but because those former things that were small are now big. Hailstorms, wildfires in some places, previous annoyances are becoming real threats to insurers.

Chris, what’s the big picture on what insurers are actually facing? What’s happening out there numbers-wise?

This is a huge threat. In terms of the number of states where this industry is losing money, it’s more than doubled from 10 years ago to basically a third of the country. The amount they’re losing is enormous. In some states, insurers are paying out $1.25 or even $1.50 for every dollar they bring in, in revenue, which is totally unsustainable.

And the result is insurers are making changes. They are pulling back from these markets. They’re hiking premiums. And often, they’re just dropping customers. And that’s where this becomes real, not just for people who surf balance sheets and trade in the stock market. This is becoming real for homeowners around the country, who all of a sudden increasingly can’t get insurance.

So, Chris, what’s the actual implication? I mean, what happens when people in a state can’t get insurance for their homes?

Getting insurance for a home is crucial if you want to sell or buy a home. Most people can’t buy a home without a mortgage. And banks won’t issue a mortgage without home insurance. So if you’ve got a home that insurance company doesn’t want to cover, you got a real problem. You need to find insurance, or that home becomes very close to unsellable.

And as you get fewer buyers, the price goes down. So this doesn’t just hurt people who are paying for these insurance premiums. It hurts people who want to sell their homes. It even could hurt, at some point, whole local economies. If home values fall, governments take in less tax revenue. That means less money for schools and police. It also means people who get hit by disasters and have to rebuild their homes all of a sudden can’t, because their insurance isn’t available anymore. It’s hard to overstate just how big a deal this is.

And is that actually happening, Chris? I mean, are housing markets being dragged down because of this problem with the insurance markets right now?

Anecdotally, we’ve got reports that in places like Florida and Louisiana and maybe in parts of California, the difficulty of getting insurance, the crazy high cost of insurance is starting to depress demand because not everyone can afford to pay these really high costs, even if they have insurance. But what we wanted to focus on with this story was also, OK, we know where this goes eventually. But where is it beginning? What are the places that are just starting to feel these shocks from the insurance market?

And so I called around and asked insurance agents, who are the front lines of this. They’re the ones who are struggling to find insurance for homeowners. And I said, hey, is there one place that I should go if I want to understand what it looks like to homeowners when all of a sudden insurance becomes really expensive or you can’t even find it? And those insurance agents told me, if you want to see what this looks like in real life, go to a little town called Marshalltown in the middle of Iowa.

We’ll be right back.

So, Chris, you went to Marshalltown, Iowa. What did you find?

Even before I got to Marshalltown, I had some idea I was in the right spot. When I landed in Des Moines and went to rent a car, the nice woman at the desk who rented me a car, she said, what are you doing here? I said, I’m here to write a story about people in Iowa who can’t get insurance because of storms. She said, oh, yeah, I know all about that. That’s a big problem here.

Even the rental car lady.

Even the rental car lady knew something was going on. And so I got into my rental car and drove about an hour northeast of Des Moines, through some rolling hills, to this lovely little town of Marshalltown. Marshalltown is a really cute, little Midwestern town with old homes and a beautiful courthouse in the town square. And when I drove through, I couldn’t help noticing all the roofs looked new.

What does that tell you?

Turns out Marshalltown, despite being a pastoral image of Midwestern easy living, was hit by two really bad disasters in recent years — first, a devastating tornado in 2018 and then, in 2020, what’s called a derecho, a straight-line wind event that’s also just enormously damaging. And the result was lots of homes in this small town got severely damaged in a short period of time. And so when you drive down, you see all these new roofs that give you the sense that something’s going on.

So climate had come to Marshalltown?

Exactly. A place that had previously seemed maybe safe from climate change, if there is such a thing, all of a sudden was not. So I found an insurance agent in Marshalltown —

We talked to other agents but haven’t talked to many homeowners.

— named Bobby Shomo. And he invited me to his office early one morning and said, come meet some people. And so I parked on a quiet street outside of his office, across the street from the courthouse, which also had a new roof, and went into his conference room and met a procession of clients who all had versions of the same horror story.

It was more — well more of double.

A huge reduction in coverage with a huge price increase.

Some people had faced big premium hikes.

I’m just a little, small business owner. So every little bit I do feel.

They had so much trouble with their insurance company.

I was with IMT Insurance forever. And then when I moved in 2020, Bobby said they won’t insure a pool.

Some people had gotten dropped.

Where we used to see carriers canceling someone for frequency of three or four or five claims, it’s one or two now.

Some people couldn’t get the coverage they needed. But it was versions of the same tale, which is all of a sudden, having homeowner’s insurance in Marshalltown was really difficult. But I wanted to see if it was bigger than just Marshalltown. So the next day, I got back in my car and drove east to Cedar Rapids, where I met another person having a version of the same problem, a guy named Dave Langston.

Tell me about Dave.

Dave lives in a handsome, modest, little townhouse on a quiet cul-de-sac on a hill at the edge of Cedar Rapids. He’s the president of his homeowners association. There’s 17 homes on this little street. And this is just as far as you could get from a danger zone. It looks as safe as could be. But in January, they got a letter from the company that insures him and his neighbors, saying his policy was being canceled, even though it wasn’t as though they’d just been hit by some giant storm.

So then what was the reason they gave?

They didn’t give a reason. And I think people might not realize, insurers don’t have to give a reason. Insurance policies are year to year. And if your insurance company decides that you’re too much of a risk or your neighborhood is too much of a risk or your state is too much of a risk, they can just leave. They can send you a letter saying, forget it. We’re canceling your insurance. There’s almost no protection people have.

And in this case, the reason was that this insurance company was losing too much money in Iowa and didn’t want to keep on writing homeowner’s insurance in the state. That was the situation that Dave shared with tens of thousands of people across the state that were all getting similar letters.

What made Dave’s situation a little more challenging was that he couldn’t get new insurance. He tried for months through agent after agent after agent. And every company told him the same thing. We won’t cover you. Even though these homes are perfectly safe in a safe part of the state, nobody would say yes. And it took them until basically two days before their insurance policy was going to run out until they finally found new coverage that was far more expensive and far more bare-bones than what they’d had.

But at least it was something.

It was something. But the problem was it wasn’t that good. Under this new policy, if Dave’s street got hit by another big windstorm, the damage from that storm and fixing that damage would wipe out all the savings set aside by these homeowners. The deductible would be crushingly high — $120,000 — to replace those roofs if the worst happened because the insurance money just wouldn’t cover anywhere close to the cost of rebuilding.

He said to me, we didn’t do anything wrong. This is just what insurance looks like today. And today, it’s us in Cedar Rapids. Everyone, though, is going to face a situation like this eventually. And Dave is right. I talked to insurance agents around the country. And they confirmed for me that this kind of a shift towards a new type of insurance, insurance that’s more expensive and doesn’t cover as much and makes it harder to rebuild after a big disaster, it’s becoming more and more common around the country.

So, Chris, if Dave and the people you spoke to in Iowa were really evidence that your hunch was right, that the problem is spreading and rapidly, what are the possible fixes here?

The fix that people seem most hopeful about is this idea that, what if you could reduce the risk and cause there to be less damage in the first place? So what some states are doing is they’re trying to encourage homeowners to spend more money on hardening their home or adding a new roof or, if it’s a wildfire zone, cut back the vegetation, things that can reduce your risk of having really serious losses. And to help pay for that, they’re telling insurers, you’ve got to offer a discount to people who do that.

And everyone who works in this field says, in theory, that’s the right approach. The problem is, number one, hardening a home costs a fantastic amount of money. So doing this at scale is hugely expensive. Number two, it takes a long time to actually get enough homes hardened in this way that you can make a real dent for insurance companies. We’re talking about years or probably decades before that has a real effect, if it ever works.

OK. So that sounds not particularly realistic, given the urgency and the timeline we’re on here. So what else are people looking at?

Option number two is the government gets involved. And instead of most Americans buying home insurance from a private company, they start buying it from government programs that are designed to make sure that people, even in risky places, can still buy insurance. That would be just a gargantuan undertaking. The idea of the government providing homeowner’s insurance because private companies can’t or won’t would lead to one of the biggest government programs that exists, if we could even do it.

So huge change, like the federal government actually trying to write these markets by itself by providing homeowner’s insurance. But is that really feasible?

Well, in some areas, we’re actually already doing it. The government already provides flood insurance because for decades, most private insurers have not wanted to cover flood. It’s too risky. It’s too expensive. But that change, with governments taking over that role, creates a new problem of its own because the government providing flood insurance that you otherwise couldn’t get means people have been building and building in flood-prone areas because they know they can get that guaranteed flood insurance.

Interesting. So that’s a huge new downside. The government would be incentivizing people to move to places that they shouldn’t be.

That’s right. But there’s even one more problem with that approach of using the government to try to solve this problem, which is these costs keep growing. The number of billion-dollar disasters the US experiences every year keeps going up. And at some point, even if the government pays the cost through some sort of subsidized insurance, what happens when that cost is so great that we can no longer afford to pay it? That’s the really hard question that no official can answer.

So that’s pretty doomsday, Chris. Are we looking at the end of insurance?

I think it’s fair to say that we’re looking at the end of insurance as we know it, the end of insurance that means most Americans can rest assured that if they get hit by a disaster, their insurance company will provide enough money they can rebuild. That idea might be going away. And what it shows is maybe the threat of climate change isn’t quite what we thought.

Maybe instead of climate change wrecking communities in the form of a big storm or a wildfire or a flood, maybe even before those things happen, climate change can wreck communities by something as seemingly mundane and even boring as insurance. Maybe the harbinger of doom is not a giant storm but an anodyne letter from your insurance company, saying, we’re sorry to inform you we can no longer cover your home.

Maybe the future of climate change is best seen not by poring over weather data from NOAA but by poring over spreadsheets from rating firms, showing the profitability from insurance companies, and how bit by bit, that money that they’re losing around the country tells its own story. And the story is these shocks are actually already here.

Chris, as always, terrifying to talk to you.

Always a pleasure, Sabrina.

Here’s what else you should know today. On Tuesday, the United Nations has reclassified the number of women and children killed in Gaza, saying that it does not have enough identifying information to know exactly how many of the total dead are women and children. The UN now estimates that about 5,000 women and about 8,000 children have been killed, figures that are about half of what it was previously citing. The UN says the numbers dropped because it is using a more conservative estimate while waiting for information on about 10,000 other dead Gazans who have not yet been identified.

And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, gave a press conference outside the court in Lower Manhattan, where Michael Cohen, the former fixer for Donald Trump, was testifying for a second day, answering questions from Trump’s lawyers. Trump is bound by a gag order. So Johnson joined other stand-ins for the former president to discredit the proceedings. Johnson, one of the most important Republicans in the country, attacked Cohen but also the trial itself, calling it a sham and political theater.

Today’s episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Shannon Lin, and Jessica Cheung. It was edited by MJ Davis Lin, with help from Michael Benoist, contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Rowan Niemisto, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

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• May 17, 2024   •   51:10 The Campus Protesters Explain Themselves
• May 16, 2024   •   30:47 The Make-or-Break Testimony of Michael Cohen
• May 15, 2024   •   27:03 The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System
• May 14, 2024   •   35:20 Voters Want Change. In Our Poll, They See It in Trump.
• May 13, 2024   •   27:46 How Biden Adopted Trump’s Trade War With China
• May 10, 2024   •   27:42 Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand
• May 9, 2024   •   34:42 One Strongman, One Billion Voters, and the Future of India
• May 8, 2024   •   28:28 A Plan to Remake the Middle East
• May 7, 2024   •   27:43 How Changing Ocean Temperatures Could Upend Life on Earth
• May 6, 2024   •   29:23 R.F.K. Jr.’s Battle to Get on the Ballot

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Christopher Flavelle

Produced by Nina Feldman ,  Shannon M. Lin and Jessica Cheung

Edited by MJ Davis Lin

With Michael Benoist

Original music by Dan Powell ,  Marion Lozano and Rowan Niemisto

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Across the United States, more frequent extreme weather is starting to cause the home insurance market to buckle, even for those who have paid their premiums dutifully year after year.

Christopher Flavelle, a climate reporter, discusses a Times investigation into one of the most consequential effects of the changes.

On today’s episode

Christopher Flavelle , a climate change reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading

As American insurers bleed cash from climate shocks , homeowners lose.

See how the home insurance crunch affects the market in each state .

Here are four takeaways from The Times’s investigation.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

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Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter who writes about how the United States is trying to adapt to the effects of climate change. More about Christopher Flavelle

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