A process of discovery, a way to bear witness

 From Sounds Wild and Broken by David George Haskell

Science is not only a process of study and discovery, it is also a way to bear witness, albeit via human ears listening to a tiny portion of the forest community's many inhabitants.

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I dodge the nastiest tangles in the understory, but mostly I try to walk a straight line. A pedometer on my hip counts paces: 260, equal to 200 meters from the last survey point.  I swing my backpack to the ground and retrieve a clipboard. ... I jab teh stopwatch and pour my attention into my ears, keeping eyes on the forest canopy.  Husky voice, phrases of four up and down notes. Scarlet tanager, twenty meters away.  Chippy-chup, a flutter of high sound. Two American goldfinches, twenty-five meters away.Slurred, bright phrases, alternating inflections up and down, a question and an answer. He sings, Where are you? There you are. Red-eyed vireo, close, only five meters away, above me on a maple branch.  Two crows fly over, ca caw-CAW.  In the distance, fifty meters away, a rapdily modulated whistle, building to an emphatic end, we-a-we-a-WEE-TEE-EE.  Hooded warbler. 

Click. Five minutes are up. Scrawl on the datasheet: "Transect V, point 2. Time: 0610. Wind: Beaufort 2. Temperature: 25 C. Vegetation: white oak and red maple canopy; sourwood, blueberry, and sassafras understory.

From mid-May to mid-June, over two years, I threaded survey lines across the forests, tree plantations, and rural settlements of the southern Cumberland Plateau in Tennnessee.