I fell in love with the little bird long before I saw it. Maybe it was the name. I was on a plane to Puerto Rico, studying the Princeton Guide to the birds of that island, scrolling past pictures of parrots and thrushes and orioles, of vireos and cuckoos and hummingbirds. My eye fell on the color plate of the Puerto Rican tody.
The bird can only be described as cute — as cute as its name. It looks like a little hummingbird, but not really: instead of having a hummingbird’s streamlined form, it is blunt and chunky, shaped more like a tiny cigar with a tail. Both females and males are bright green and yellow, with red throats and mostly red bills. They are undeniably comical looking, as comical as their name, in a world that surely needs some comedy. I had to see one.
My week in Puerto Rico was spent mainly in and around the El Yunque rainforest. Every day I hiked the trails or hung around the impressive visitor center and its grounds. It’s called a rainforest for a reason: there were brief but intense rain showers each afternoon, followed by bright sunshine. This weather seems to stimulate the bird life there. Calls, hoots, and songs emanated from the dense foliage surrounding me.
But a rainforest does not easily give up its secrets. Its birds are often heard, less often seen. Still, over the days I was there I compiled a list of interesting species, some found only on the island: the Puerto Rican lizard cuckoo, the scaly-naped pigeon, the pearly-eyed thrasher, and a couple of dozen more. But no tody.
One day I ran into a professional bird guide who told me that he had just observed a pair of todies (todys?) at a particular spot on a particular trail not far from the visitor center. I hastened to that spot. I stood there. I waited. And waited. I looked and I listened for a full half hour. Nada.
This was exactly where the trail made a hairpin turn. It looked out over a clearing in the otherwise dense backdrop of palms, vines, and epiphytes. A nonbirder might assume that I was frustrated. Not true. I knew I was exactly where the tody lived. I was surrounded by the essence of todyness. This was what I had come 1,650 miles for.
Standing by the side of the trail all that time, I was aware of people walking past me. Snatches of their conversations wafted toward me. One person worried about mosquitoes (there were none), another was pursuing the details of some business deal, and yet another was discussing his wife’s cancer diagnosis and treatment options. None of these people carried binoculars. I wondered what exactly they were getting from their trail time. If they walked long enough, could they allow the calm of the rainforest to penetrate their selves? Could they leave behind, even for a few minutes, their ordinary lives — even the cancer? Why else be there?
No, I did not see a tody that day, but two days later, at the same spot, I did. Two todies. Obviously a pair, they sat side by side on a branch right above my head for a minute or two. Then they were gone.
I got my tody. What exactly does that mean? Simply that my world, my life, has been expanded by these two little birds. I am not a “lister.” I have seen many species that I have completely forgotten about; they are simply names on a page. But with many more species, I have made a lasting connection. It is not just the bird but the bird in its landscape, whether it is a California condor soaring above an Arizona canyon, or a Wilson’s storm petrel dancing amid the waves on Stellwagen Bank, or a piping plover calling plaintively on a windswept ocean beach. The bird without the landscape would have little meaning, like seeing a wild animal behind the bars of its cage in a zoo, or like a recording of a live play.
Variety is nice, but you don’t have to go to Puerto Rico to have the experience of connection with the natural world. We each live in a paradise of our own. Go outside with fresh eyes. Whether it is a moon snail or a herring gull, a red fox or a gray squirrel, spend some time with it — real time — and see what happens.
