Birders have described my yard as “very birdy.” But it was not always that way. I had to lure these birds to check out my woodland habitat and make it so irresistible they would never leave.

I first bought a feeder stand and hung from its arms a seed feeder and a nectar feeder. That brought in a few new birds, and also the squirrels, crows and Scrub Jays. I then bought squirrel-proof seed feeders and discovered how smart squirrels truly are. I bought baffles and more highly touted squirrel-proof feeders, which brought out the athleticism of squirrels. Then I built my own squirrel-proof cage-feeders, which also kept out crows and Scrub Jays. I changed to hot pepper suet and seeds the squirrels hated. I stored thousands of live mealworms in the fridge, without complaint from my husband.

But I found that the most successful lure was also the cheapest: shallow saucers of fresh water for bathing and drinking. So that is the feeder setup at my home in Sausalito, Calif. It enables me to see the birds first thing in the morning when I am brushing my teeth in front of the bathroom window. At dusk, from the table facing the patio, I see hummingbirds taking their last sip of the day. And when dusk turns to darkness, I hear the great Horned Owl sing before flying off for his nightly hunt.

The birds see me, too. They are unperturbed if I sit at the dining table inside and watch them eat, bathe and cavort on the patio. They don’t mind if I stand still next to the cage feeders and fill the bowls. But when I pick up the binoculars, even from a distance or from inside the house, the birds fly off. When I put down my binoculars, they usually return within 20 seconds. Oh, it’s just that flightless creature who brings the food.

I took a photo of myself looking through binoculars and discovered I am very scary. I have big shiny dark eyes, like an owl’s.

I am always curious how birds accommodate humans in their space. What is needed to dampen fright and flight? Mealworms and suet are not enough. I have thought about this notion of trust and fear in wild birds for several years. How could they possibly know that the large flightless creature staring at them will not grow hungry and eat them? What factors must be in place for a bird to trust me? Consistently bringing food. Staying my distance and letting them come to me. Not moving. I’ve made great progress. They are less wary.

I remind myself that I must be careful not to use terms that describe human emotions, like trust. But anthropomorphic paradigms are a start for looking at equivalents from a bird’s perspective. I parse out the traits of human emotions to see if any are found in the behavior of birds. What about the two Pygmy Nuthatches that sat side by side watching the storm, while the male groomed the female by pulling off mites? Was that an avian expression of love? Do humans express it any better? Would my husband pluck parasites off my scalp and eat them?

When I first read Bernd Heinrich’s book “Mind of the Raven,” I was tempted to cultivate a relationship with a crow. I imagined it coming at regular times, and our having crow-human exchanges. It might even imitate a few words and bring me gifts. The crows, however, did not come singly to our yard. They arrived as a clan, 10 to 50 of them, often shrieking in histrionic agitation over who knows what. I later shifted the fantasy of bird buddies to another corvid, a Scrub Jay, one of the first birds I identified in my yard. They usually come to the yard one at a time, emitting a few loud squawks, which often draw the attention of one or two other jays that chase away the first.

I have since discarded the notion of a bird-human friendship. I love that the birds are wild, but my relationship with the Scrub Jays is complicated. They scare away the smaller birds by landing like a bomb and devour their food. A Scrub Jay weighs about 2.8 ounces and its problem-solving skills in my yard prove it is the smartest bird on the block.

When a huge week-long rainstorm came, I took the feeders down and placed them on a table under a patio umbrella. Soon I saw a Scrub Jay sitting on the table, now able to easily stick its bill in and nab food in a plastic bowl that was set a little too close to the corners. Easily fixed. I put all the food in a glass bowl and set that in the center. The Scrub extended its bill through the grid openings, far enough in that it could push the bowl closer to the other end. It would then go to that end and pull the glass bowl toward it and eat at its leisure. I set the bowl on a white silicone pad to keep it from sliding.

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The next morning, silicone confetti littered the table and flagstone, and the empty bowl was next to the side of the cage. I laced branches through the sides of the cages to keep the jay from poking its bill inside. The Scrub pulled out the branches. That was a new one. I stuck stronger sticks through the grate. By morning they lie on the ground, some of them pecked in two. I added tall rocks surrounding the bowl, and by morning, I saw the Scrub had pushed them aside. I put bricks on four sides. Those were immovable. I win!

Then I saw the Scrub Jay stick its entire head in the cage, guillotine style. It ate leisurely at Marie Antoinette’s Bistro. The Scrub was vulnerable to attack from behind. A big towhee could enter the cage from the other side and attack the Scrub’s face. Its tolerance for danger was impressive.

Were these break-in behaviors the work of one genius bird? Are they behaviors newly acquired by trial and error to fit the puzzle I had created? More likely, the Scrub Jay already possessed the same or similar problem-solving skills that it used in the wild. Pulling food out of crevices, for example. Tearing acorns off branches. Pushing aside obstacles. I’m guessing it simply combined whichever skills it already had to solve the puzzle at hand.

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By disposition, I am an observer. I want to know why things happen. I need to feel the gut kick of strong emotions. I am drawn to see details, patterns and aberrations that suggest a more interesting truth. I am obsessive and can spend months doing research that I may never use, but to me it is time well spent. With both fiction and birds, I think about existence, the span of life, from conception to birth to survival to death to remembrance by others. I reflect on mortality, the strangeness of it, the inevitability. I do that daily, and not with dread, but with awareness that life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images, there for pondering, for reviving the bird and my heart. With every novel I finish I think it’s a miracle, because three or four predecessors never came to life. With every adult bird I see, I think it’s a miracle, because so many young songbirds die before the end of their first year.

When I try to find the right image and words that capture an emotion, I must beat down clichés and homilies, which are devoid of fresh thought and honest contemplation. When I see a bird that has died, I don’t accept the sanguine saying, “It’s the circle of life.” It is good to mourn and wish it weren’t so.

Since 2016, I have gone from being able to identify three species in my backyard to 63, and no doubt more to come. A few are one-offs. Some spend the winter here before returning to Alaska or Canada. And many now live here year-round. So you know how birdy my yard truly is. Over two days in December my visitors were six Oak Timice, a pair of California Towhees, a Spotted Towhee, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, a Hermit Thrush, two Fox Sparrows, passels of Pygmy Nuthatches and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, a Bewick’s Wren, Mourning Doves, a whole bunch of House Finches and Lesser Goldfinches, a Purple Finch, many Dark-eyed Juncos, three Townsend’s Warblers, an Orange-crowned Warbler, a Nuttall’s Woodpecker, a couple dozen Golden-Crowned Sparrows, a White-Throated Sparrow, an American Robin, four California Scrub Jays and a mob of American Crows that shriek at the resident Great Horned Owl. I know there are more birds in the high trees who have never visited the feeders. If I learn their birdsongs, I will know who they are. That’s next.

Adapted from “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” © 2024 by Amy Tan. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Written and illustrated by Amy Tan. Foreword by David Allen Sibley

Knopf. 288 pp. $35

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