Len Howard

In 1938, Gwendolen Howard purchased a plot of land at the edge of Ditchling, a town near Brighton, England. Howard played the viola in a London orchestra, but, now in her mid-40s, had grown tired of city life. She also wanted to study birds. When she moved into Bird Cottage, as Howard named the house she built in Ditchling, she didn’t yet know birds very well. She did, however, have misgivings about how birds were being studied by scientists. Many birds, then as now, were kept in captive conditions that greatly influenced their behavior. Birds in small cages could not fly; they were often kept alone, despite being social creatures. They were also afraid of the scientists studying them . Howard believed that all of these factors warped their behaviors and our understanding of them. Howard took a different approach. She opened the windows of her cottage, so that her avian neighbors could come and go as they pleased. She fed them, but she did not capture, domesticate, or tame them. Nearby birds—blue tits and great tits, robins, sparrows, blackbirds—soon came to trust her. She would go on to collect some of the most unique observations ever made of birds, and set an example that remains relevant today. On a spring morning three months after she moved in, when Howard was busy in the house, a blue titmouse— Cyanistes caeruleus , part of a family that includes chickadees—flew up to her in what Howard perceived as obvious distress. The bird hovered closely in front of her face, cried out, and fixed her eyes on Howard’s. The bird’s partner was just outside, also trying to get Howard’s attention. She followed them into the garden and saw that their nest had been pulled out of the entrance hole of their nesting box, probably by a cat. Howard picked up the pieces and put the nesting materials and eggs back into the box. “It was obvious something was wrong and she was asking for my help,” Howard later wrote. This incident changed how Howard saw birds. She would go on to collect some of the most unique observations ever made of birds, and set an example that remains relevant today. At that time, scientists saw birds as creatures governed primarily by instinct. The field of ethology—the study of animal behavior—was then in its infancy, with pioneering scientists including Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen bringing experimental rigor to what had been a largely anecdotal field. However, they focused primarily on the role of instinct, rather than on richer forms of intelligence. Although Howard was critical of scientific methods, she had not objected to the understandings they produced. She did not expect the songbirds who lived nearby to be very intelligent at all. The incident with the blue titmice showed her that birds do not act solely on instinct—which ostensibly would tell them to be wary of humans, not seek one out when threatened—but could think flexibly. “What else except thought could have made her act thus?” she asked. That interpretation would not pass scientific muster. It is anecdotal. One can easily imagine alternative explanations. The observations were not verified or replicated. But anecdote is still important in expanding the realm of possibility, in providing the raw material of further understanding—and Howard was uniquely positioned to gather it. After the incident with the blue tits, Howard decided to not just study bird song, but to also write about their characters, relationships, and inner lives. Some birds came to her for food; others preferred the insects and berries they found themselves but still sought out her company. The birds sat on her hands as she typed or played the piano; in the morning, fledglings skied on her pillow and played with her hair. There were birds who slept in the cardboard boxes she attached to her walls and ceilings, birds who preferred to sleep outside in nesting boxes, shrubs or trees, and birds who found their own sleeping places in the house. Through living in close proximity