Fun
Lazy Sunday: The Pillar
Dear Kay,
I think about the fact that we live 1,000 miles apart yet talk to each other more than pretty much anybody else in our lives. Still, there are huge swaths of life that we never talk about to each other.
Like, for instance, my thing with birds.
I know I’ve gone on about bluebirds and owls in this space, but really: I think about birds all the time. When I’m talking to you on the phone, I’m actually mostly looking at the birds on the feeders outside my window. Maybe you can tell this.
I don’t have a life list, or binoculars, or any particular ornithological expertise. I love them abjectly, that’s all. I love listening to them, and seeing them, and wishing I were one of them.
Birdwatching
Last Saturday, I discovered an artist who spent four years on a project that has left me speechless.
Amid the sweaty hordes at the New York Art Book Fair—such a scene—there was a serene corner with a table of books by a photographer named Stephen Gill.
The books on the table were beautifully plain, but when I opened The Pillar, I couldn’t believe the extravagant life hidden behind the simple cover. See the video up top for a glimpse, which is wholly inadequate because this book reads like a novel.
Page after page of birds—wild-eyed raptors, blurry owls, songbirds, each one landed on the same wooden pillar. The seasons change, but the post never moves.
It is the result of an experiment. Stephen Gill set up a motion-sensing camera beside a post he planted in a flat field near his home in Sweden. (He is British by birth but now lives in Sweden.) He writes:
“In January 2015, with the inkling of an idea that their activity might be more prevalent than I first thought, I decided to try to pull the birds from the sky. On the edge of a field next to a stream I set up a six-centimeter-diameter stage in the form of a wooden pillar about one and half metres high. Opposite it I placed another, the same size, on which I mounted a motion-sensor camera. When I visited the camera a few days later, to my surprise, it had worked. The pillar had funneled the birds from the sky, offering them a place to rest, feed, nurse their young, and look around. I was captivated.”
When I realized that the man I was talking to behind the table was the photographer himself, I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say. How rare to discover a book and its creator in the same moment, especially a book that grabbed my imagination so instantly.
Here’s a review from The Guardian.
And here’s where you can order a copy of this book. Stephen self-publishes his work (a man after my own heart) in order to have complete control over his editions.
I didn’t even mention the booklet that is tucked in the back, an essay, “Birdland,” by the best-selling Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard.
It’s lovely, but The Pillar is a book that needs no words at all.
Love,
Ann
So interesting, Kay. While I was reading your post I was thinking about two things. The first was a Facebook friend of mine who somehow finds beautiful pictures of birds to share. They are truly magnificent pictures.
The other thing may have been before your time, Kay. Do you remember in the original Mary Poppins movie, when she was singing “Just A Spoonful of Sugar”? There was that little mechanical bird (a robin?) that came inside to sit on Mary’s finger while singing along. Oh, and (later in the movie) the bird lady, “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag”.
Sorry Ann. I guess I read this too early in the morning and thought that Kay wrote the post.
THANK YOU for sharing this with us. I too love the birds and find them fascinating!! So happy to learn that you do too!
I too, find that when I walk out onto my back yard outside patio to drink my coffee some early mornings, I just love the silence and listening to the different sounds of the birds. It gives me inner peace, a calmness….
Please continue to include your birding observations in your writing. Knitting is, after all, so much more than just about the yarn or the tools with which we use it … yes?
And isn’t knitting a variant of nest building?
Thank you for this! I’m a long time “twitcher”, with binoculars, life list and year round bird feeders, but I have kept it all mostly on the down low. Lately, though, I’ve been coming out of the closet with my fascination and this post thrills me in every possible way. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Lovely. Thank you for sharing.
Birds creep me out a bit (well, indoor birds, anyway). But that book looks really stunning. Thanks foe sharing this story!
Love this. Thank you Ann. Any bird lovers who haven’t watched Winged Migration should find a way to do that.
This is the sort of art I am sorely tempted to acquire. Especially if I am seeing/touching it in person, and have to either acquire it or walk away.
Thank you for sharing this. Have just ordered the book for my mother who loves watching birds. The pictures I saw were amazing!
What a synchronicity! This morning, while we were having breakfast on the back porch, my husband mentioned that many birds visit the purple marten house in the middle of the field, below the pond. I didn’t say anything, but thought to myself “perhaps they would visit even it if weren’t a bird house. Maybe it’s a place to rest in the middle of the field.” Oh. My. Word. I’m going to order a copy of this for my husband.
Our 13-year-old has been going to bird camp (Audubon) since he was little, and since we can’t have cats and dogs (asthmatic sibling), this year we got him a parakeet. I had always thought that a bird for a pet was like a fish— beautiful, enclosed, not really interactive— but nope. Our little guy lives on our son’s shoulder but then hops off and runs over to see other family members. He tries to imitate our vocal patterns. He preens our hair and gives us kisses on the cheek, and he runs around the floor exploring. He has made me so much more interested in birds. 🙂
I was just checking Audubon’s rare bird alert for today before clicking over to MDK. I can’t get over the statistic that nearly one-third of the birds have disappeared in the last decade or so. I appreciate the book recommendation.
I just clipped an article about that out of the paper the other day. Made me think of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Very worrisome. I, too, am a bird lover. Never thought anyone wasn’t until my daughter said they kind of creep her out because they remind her of dinosaurs. Still, I enjoy watching and listening to them in my backyard and keep a birdbath ready for them at all times.
Wow. What a great idea! And, say, the photographs aren’t bad, either. In a slightly different vein, if you have any fondness for crows in particular, look for the photography of June Hunter of Vancouver B.C. Her blog is called The Urban Nature Enthusiast.
I might have to get this book. I never believed that birds had personality, or any ability to interact. We had to good fortune to have a pair of red-tailed hawks nest in our yard three years running. The drama! The nervous first time parents vs. the been-there-done-that, only call me if there’s blood second year. Flying lessons, feeding time. It was a marvel i feel privileged to have witnessed. I now even watch the robins and sparrows differently.
Ann, I was going to suggest following ‘The Daily James’ on Instagram- but I see you are ahead of me. I love a good book about the drama of birds 🙂 In that May Sarton vibe kinda way (small, peaceful, absorbing). You might also like The Moon by Whale Light if you are unfamiliar with it.