The Physical Spirit

I'd like to introduce Mr. Hudson by discussing just one single point. It won't make for a very specific reference, but I think it is a "critical abstraction" that is valuable to understand.

I have on my desk the original two volume set of Birds of La Plata, published in 1920. No, I don't. It was just a pretty lie to see how it might feel. I have on my desk the single Capra Press paperback entitled The Bird Biographies of W. H. Hudson, printed in 1988. Its forty-nine chapters, each a life history of a different species, were taken from Birds of La Plata.

Until 1900, bird-watching was what we would call bird-shooting. Naturalists carried guns and sacks instead of binoculars and field guides. Personal collections of bird carcasses—often including thousands of specimens—were the way to go. A lot of people still think that is a really great idea.

What is most remarkable is that the early naturalists wrote with real feeling for the birds they killed. They described the aesthetic delight in watching form and colour, of listening to song—and then they shot the bird. This was not unusual at all, nor was it considered contradictory.

There seem to be two kinds of people: those who kill, and those who don't. Or maybe I should say those who find killing fun, and those who try to avoid it. If you are of the second set, the aesthetic and even romantic writings of the early naturalists might well leave you cold. Biologists like to say that ontogeny recapitulates philogeny, which means that the story of an individual retraces the paths the species has come in its evolution. I am not sure whether hunters see themselves evolving into poets, though poets might wish they would.

I have watched birds, and listened to birds, for forty-six years. At least, my present-day Birds of a Lifetime—my "life list"—has a first page written September 10, 1960. I was fourteen then. A lot of what I learned followed the culture of Henry Hudson and a number of others who killed birds and marvelled at their beauty and passed along the most wonderful insights and scientific understanding of these creatures I love. I would much prefer, if I were given the choice, that I were ignorant of many truths about birds, than that I should have learned these truths because these creatures were shot. The thing has its yin and yang. I prefer gentlessness myself.

I think Henry Hudson would agree. That is the odd part. It all depends where we began, and how we were shaped, and what was the example. So, if you read his books, or if you read any of these naturalists' books, you may want to contemplate that.

The exception might be Alexander F. Skutch, who came along in 1904, and died a hundred years later. I think I might see about beginning a thread about his works, which are also about birds and occasionally romance; and which are also about the spirit and the mind. There has always been a connection between writers and people who study life forms. Many biologists are well-read and many are good writers.

The tragedy of killing animals is a modern concept, that developed during last century, and its my belief that ironically, it might be related to the enhancing distance between man and nature.
In other times, no so long ago, everybody would "assassinate" an animal, by shooting its head or twisting its neck until the column collapsed, to have a dinner served. This people -our ancestors- far away from being monsters, were just playing their role in the ecosystem.
Nowadays we luckily have the possibility of buying a piece of meat in a plastic pack, which hardly represents the image of the animal that meat belongs to. Most of our contemporaries don´t even know how those animals are killed nor want to know it. That is certainly a distancing between them and nature. So, I would add, with your allowance, at least a third kind of person to the two you suggested: those who "kill for a need". This "kind of people" nowadays still exist, and were majority in the times when W. H. Hudson was raised here in Argentina.
I´m an argentine who enjoyed contemplating birds since a kid, in the so called "Pampa" (which we simply refer to as countryside). I didn´t discover Henry Hudson till many years later, and when I did I truly felt that his love for nature and particularly birds represented my feelings.
I believe we should be able to recapitulate history without judging the acts committed with a conscience that was shaped in a different scientific and cultural background. We must try to understand why people acted in a way that we now consider cruel, without judging them for acting that way.
As you perfectly state: "It all depends where we began, and how we were shaped, and what was the example".
As a last thought, I´d like to ask you a question: Don´t you think that its because of people like Hudson and Darwin, who experimented true love for nature, that people like you and me feel the need of protecting wild life and condemning bird hunting? I certainly do.
I suggest you should all read "Far away and long ago" which in my opinion is some of the best Hudson has written. And I hope that the lecture of this book will help you understand why he and many other early ornithologists "killed birds" while they "marveled at their beauty".
Hudson was a poet and a hunter, and yet I´m sure that gentleness was a virtue he possessed. His books inspired me love for nature like no other writing has.
Sincerely, Tomás