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What is a Bird? | July 28–August 7, 2025
10-day session
The session “What is a Bird?” is motivated by passion: the love of birds, and the activity of observing them in their habitats, popularly known as “birding.” Inevitably, our thirst for intellectual exchange, good-natured debate, and convivial company, so endemic to the Mildred’s Lane ethos, will also drive our time together. We will contemplate the ways that birds have been persistently present in the history of art and culture. Our curiosity is also prompted by the current popularity of bird watching in a time of extraordinary global ecological stress. The last 125 years of community-led bird counts in the US alone, account for the largest citizen science dataset of any living organism in the world. What does it mean that birding is the fastest growing outdoor activity, and a significant economic and cultural force in our society?
The fastest moving animal on earth is a bird, and the longest known migration of any animal is that of a bird. Various birds function as indicator species, keystone species, charismatic species, iconic species, invasive species and endangered species. Birds can be weaponized, ritualized, mechanized, romanticized and politicized. In the end, however, they are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates who exist everywhere humans do, and many places where humans do not. During this session, we will see birds recently arriving from the Amazon making their summer home in the woods of Pennsylvania. And possibly see early arrivals from the tundra getting a head start on autumn migration. We have a lot to learn from them, and even more to marvel about them.
Artists, ecologists, landscape architects, cultural theorists, bird enthusiasts and bird curious, are encouraged to apply to this focused and exuberant session. Binoculars are essential! Activities will include basic birding, insightful readings and discussions, drawing workshops, generative writing practice, a look at the place of birds in film and visual culture, and local field trips. This promises to be one of the most fun sessions in the history of Mildred’s Lane, and that is saying a lot.
10-day session
The session “What is a Bird?” is motivated by passion: the love of birds, and the activity of observing them in their habitats, popularly known as “birding.” Inevitably, our thirst for intellectual exchange, good-natured debate, and convivial company, so endemic to the Mildred’s Lane ethos, will also drive our time together. We will contemplate the ways that birds have been persistently present in the history of art and culture. Our curiosity is also prompted by the current popularity of bird watching in a time of extraordinary global ecological stress. The last 125 years of community-led bird counts in the US alone, account for the largest citizen science dataset of any living organism in the world. What does it mean that birding is the fastest growing outdoor activity, and a significant economic and cultural force in our society?
The fastest moving animal on earth is a bird, and the longest known migration of any animal is that of a bird. Various birds function as indicator species, keystone species, charismatic species, iconic species, invasive species and endangered species. Birds can be weaponized, ritualized, mechanized, romanticized and politicized. In the end, however, they are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates who exist everywhere humans do, and many places where humans do not. During this session, we will see birds recently arriving from the Amazon making their summer home in the woods of Pennsylvania. And possibly see early arrivals from the tundra getting a head start on autumn migration. We have a lot to learn from them, and even more to marvel about them.
Artists, ecologists, landscape architects, cultural theorists, bird enthusiasts and bird curious, are encouraged to apply to this focused and exuberant session. Binoculars are essential! Activities will include basic birding, insightful readings and discussions, drawing workshops, generative writing practice, a look at the place of birds in film and visual culture, and local field trips. This promises to be one of the most fun sessions in the history of Mildred’s Lane, and that is saying a lot.