Watching nature at work

Like virtually everyone on the planet, a lot of my work over the previous year has been conducted from home. In the process, many previously uncritically accepted definitions and boundaries have been re-evaluated, repurposed or radically re-caste. None more so than the traditional conception of work and home. These once mutually exclusive zones of proscribed activity suddenly, somehow merged.

Instead of home being a place primarily occupied at the beginning and end of a fully occupied day of urgent activities, we all found ourselves with time, time to reflect, or worry or possibly even wonder.

One of the well-documented phenomena to have emerged from this global experiment in forced home detention has been the greatly enhanced appreciation of nature. Prosaically, this has included simple things such as gardening and, of particular interest to me, the massive increase in birdwatching. These activities have received a lot of attention (by similarly locked-down researchers) but both have been interpreted as evidence of a desire for some type of connection with nature. This doesn’t have to be viewed as mystical or quasi-religious. Well before the covid era, a vast amount of research had demonstrated the extraordinary effects that relatively small amounts of contact with natural settings can have on wellbeing, mental health and rates of healing. These trans-disciplinary investigations have transformed our understanding of the importance of even small ‘doses’ of nature in our lives. Discovering that something as simple as walking through a city park, for example, can literally reconnect the structures of the brain is leading to some serious reassessments of just what ‘common or garden’ variety outdoors activities might mean. If something as indirect as ‘exposure to greenspace’ can be a significant and positive influence, the experience of searching for and watching birds or an intimate encounter with birds at a backyard feeder start to take on a new significance.

These intellectual dimensions were not at the forefront of my mind when I began to settle into my newly immobile lifestyle in the middle of 2020. I was already a motivated bird watcher, but this was an activity normally conducted far from home. Like plenty of others, I saw nature as being, almost by definition, somewhere else. Home was, well, tame, domesticated and routine. My initial reaction to being forced to stay at home was that I would be denied any interaction with nature. It wasn’t long before nature intervened.

Most days, I avoided the other noisy Zoom conversations occurring inside the house by relocating to the verandah. If I looked up from my screen, I could look into the foliage of a number of trees and over a broad sweep of space over the rooftops below. It didn’t take long before I began to realise that things were happening almost continuously.

Noisy miners, rainbow lorikeets and blue-faced honeyeaters were the most persistent visitors but there were many others as well. I had no idea that there were present in my own backyard so much. There was a lot of interaction between these common birds but also plenty of normal, simple foraging and resting. Like me, these creatures were ‘at work’; there were periods of busy concentration, pauses to snack, trivial disputes with a family member, and apparently vacant staring into space.

My academic interests are focussed on trying to understand the ecology of urban landscapes. Mostly this has been documenting the steady decline of biodiversity in our cities, the inevitable outcome of the profound changes we have made to the original environments that are now sprawling suburbs. But while many (no, most) wild species have had to leave or perished as these changes were wrought, some – such as the three species jostling before me - have prospered. Why? Largely because we have planted so many nectar-bearing plants, such as callistemons and grevilleas. Simply by planting lots of these showy native plants, we have provided a superabundance of the very resource these behaviourally dominant birds love. Something as simple as the choice of garden plants has entirely altered the composition of the bird community around us.

As an urban ecologist, someone who is supposed to think about the way that the natural and human worlds interact, what I have come to realise is how artificial such a dichotomy actually is. There has long been a tendency to view the human-dominated world of the city as something fundamentally different to natural areas. To triumphantly declare the victory of human endeavour over the primitive world of nature, or conversely, to lament the absence of the natural in the city. For some, the urban landscape is either evidence of our superiority or exhibit one confirming our hubris. The reality is that these conceptions are not mutually exclusive. Nature is not absent from even the most contrived, concrete-and-glass CBD. Humanity and nature are not and can’t be separate realms.

That might sound a bit philosophical but it’s a view point that can make a difference to your daily life. You may even have returned to work from your office in the city by now. Chances are, you will be able see all sorts of nature through the window: those forested hills, the peregrine falcons chasing pigeons, the ibis in the park below. There are reasons that an increasing number of inner-city towers now have green roofs, and even green walls. Those plants in the waiting room or in the pot on your desk? That’s just a reminder that nature is not ‘somewhere else’; it’s everywhere and that’s a great relief.

Professor Darryl Jones is an urban ecologist, academic, lecturer, public speaker and author based at Griffith University in Brisbane. He is especially interested in the interaction between people and wildlife, particularly in cities. For over 30 years he has investigated the ecology of species such as brush-turkeys, magpies, possums, ibis and crows – all associated with conflicts – as well as the positive relationships. This has resulted in his books The Birds At My Table (2018), and Feeding The Birds At Your Table (2019) and, currently being written, Curlews on Vulture Street. He has published seven books and over 180 scientific articles, and frequently appears in the media.