Learning about the bulbul

Last week I had our handyman Jess prune some branches from an old tree on the side of our front yard, which we’ve kept low and pruned so the morning sun can bless the small grass lawn past it. Besides, it’s bedecked with a dozen of those round capiz shells with lighte bulbs for party illumination.

Anyway, this time out, among the branches hacked off and fallen on the lawn was one with a bird’s nest attached to a crook. It was a round one, woven of small branches and twigs for its circular form. Why, it even had a couple of short strips of tissue paper that the avian architect attached on one side of the nest — although the dry tissue didn’t appear to contribute much to structural integrity. 

Jess said there was another one in a higher bough. I asked him to desist from hacking off that one, in fact felt rather sorry that the fallen one could now no longer serve its purpose. I recall hearing long ago that bird’s nests that have been touched by human hands would no longer be used for nesting. 

I used to keep a modest collection of bird’s nests, steeped as I’ve been in fascination over the natural scheme of things, especially those that involve grand designs. Now I had a new one, of which, when I posted photos of it on my FB Timeline, poet-architect Cesar Aljama had this to say: 

“An interesting example of avian architecture — to think that the birds have only their sharp beaks, flexible necks, and relatively strong claws to use for constructing this ephemeral structure from twigs and other found objects which will only be utilized for a short period of time (from egg-laying to chick-tending since soon after they will all be flying away). Note that each bird specie has its own peculiar design style. Architectural anthropology would point to nests as the basic forms of habitation — the primordial definition of territorial space.”

See what you get if you post interesting photos online? You learn something, from learned friends. Smiley.

Actually, I had wondered which bird had built it, among those I see daily hopping around and picking away at the carabao grass on our backyard, mostly mayas and some pipits, and one larger bird with a robust white breast and a tinge of yellow on its underside.

That bird I’d also often see perching by its lonesome on the thin branches of a growing Kaffir lime tree on the front yard, directly in my line of sight when I’m on my working table close t the garden.

Curiously, since that nest had fallen (and since been deposited for display atop a new bookshelf Jess had crafted — from my design, ehem, with a pair of varnished log stumps as their bookending base), that bird never missed an afternoon without catching my attention, some four-five meters away from my work area.

I took zoomed-in pics of it with my iPhone camera, nowhere near the quality of bird photos that poet-dramatist Reuel Aguila takes around the UP Diliman campus and elsewhere, but clear enough despite the bird being in the shadows — or okay enough to post on FB so that knowledgeable friends could tell me what the bird was.

The earlier responses, curiously enough, came from lady friends. Artist June “Beng” Dalisay said it was a shrike, or what we here call “tarat.” Writer Lakamibini “Bing” Sitoy in Copenhagen agreed. Between Beng and Bing, oh, okay, I thought, why not, so it must indeed be a “Boom Boom Tarat.” Smiley. 

Annabelle Lee-Adriano of Dumaguete concurred: “Looks like a brown shrike. We call it tibalas over here.” She even sent her own photos of the specie, taken around my fave Antulang Beach Resort in Siaton.

From Sydney, writer-editor-artist Alfredo “Ding” Roces wrote: “Looks like a tarat, puede rin bulbul. Ask Tiny (Nuyda).” Vics Magsaysay in LA agreed: “Krip, tama nga si Ding, tipong tarat nga. Medyo mapintog di tulad ng maya o pipit na slender ng kaunti.”

Artist Mariline Ongkingco chimed in: “The bird looks like the ones who visit our yard in Tagaytay, so what is the consensus on its specie name so I can Google and tell my apo what it is... pretty please?” Then added when I informed her that the consensus developing pointed to a tarat: “Brown Shrike (Lanius cristatus)... I just Googled... Wow thank you all...”

But my old buddy, the poet-pilgrim Bimboy Penaranda whose home with my kumareng Jo is in Bai, Laguna, said it looked more like what they called a laklak (a bulbul), which he also knew to visit gardens in Metro Manila. Then the authoritative bird photographer Reuel also offered that it looked to him like “a yellow-vented bulbul,” but that I had said its yellow tinge was on its breast whereas the YVB had it on its underside.

Oh, my bad. In succeeding days my ageing sight had to correct that input, as each day the bird conducted its visitation. Yes, the yellow tinge was near the bird’s puwet.

Nude photographer and radio/TV man Gerry Cornejo sent a YouTube videoclip of Pilita Corrales singing Ang Pipit, with that bird’s photos. Writer Gilbert Tan of Cagayan de Oro sent audio clips of the songs of the Yellow-Vented Bulbul and the Long-Tailed Shrike, for comparison. I told Gerry that the pipit was out of the running, and Gilbert that I hadn’t focused at all on the birdsongs in our garden, since they were usually drowned out by cheers from the TV set whenever the Oklahoma City Thunder were hosting an NBA game at home…

Reuel insisted it wasn’t a shrike, but a Yellow-vented Bulbul. Artist Sonny Yñiguez hammered the gavel down. “Philippine yellow vented bulbul iyan, Krip, ubos ang bunga ng sili nyo. Sa Tagalog kalaga o luklak” Now, this is the guy who’s trekked the wilds no end and hunted fair game with his own homemade bows and arrows. Instantly was I convinced: ‘Twas a bulbul.

From Bacolod, actor Dwight Gaston Hamlet-ed himself: Yes yes inuubos niyan ang sili namin. It’s what we Ilonggers call talimbabatang. But no, talimbabatangs are swifts.” Our helper Evelyn confirmed that she has had to compete with that bird for our siling labuyo once they started turning red. 

From Iowa City, my sister Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas asked if I knew what bulbul meant in Visayan. I said it must be the same as what we Tagalogs meant it for, and openly wondered if that was national consensus. Then I wondered out loud: “Unless our poet-friend Tony Tan in Iligan can say the Tausugs have a different word for it. I also reminded Rowena that another poet-friend, Cesar Ruiz Aquino in Dumaguete, had a prizewinning short story where he mentioned an Olongapo rock opera titled “Bulbul.”

To which Rowena replied: “We oughtta set Dr. Aquino to track the philological link between the Olongapo rock opera and the Russo-Turkish War poem written by Percy French, ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir…’” And Dr. Aquino couldn’t help but correct my recollection with an excerpt: “’In the late sixties, Mr. Manchester Winchester regaled our literati, as well as non-literati, with the hair-raising Olongapo rock opera Bulbul.’ The story was ‘The Reader’ & it didn’t win though I understand it was short-listed in the 1981 or 1982 Palanca. One judge is said to have remarked ‘This is not a story — it has no beginning, no middle, & no end.’ To this day I can’t quarrel w/ that.”

Now here comes the hairier part. From poet John Labella out there in Princeton: “I kept wondering why the bulbul keeps visiting you. Whether it carries some kind of missive. So I did some surfing. I am not so sure about what the bird means to the Sufis. Either Persian name for nightingale is bulbul (bulbul-nama) or the Sufis regard as the same bird two different kinds…

“Thinking about the bulbul as nightingale or vice versa, I ended up recalling how metaphor works. Metaphor deliberately confounds two kinds in order to clarify the one and the other, placing each in a shared circuit of energy. The bulbul as the spirit of metaphor, of energy transfers between words as between things.          

“So out of curiosity, I looked for more academic sources about the bulbul/nightingale. What I found surprised me, and I thought I should share it with you. I am convinced the bird is your spirit animal now.        

“For Sufis, comprehending the language of the birds was not limited simply to deciphering their calls as they engage in worship of God. Bird songs and melodies could also be understood as the expressions of spiritual experiences of beings at various stages of development. In this regard, Sufi poets were particularly intrigued by the song of the nightingale. which they interpreted to be the lament of a yearning lover. Thus arose from the most famous pair of images in Persian and Persianate-influenced mystical poetry: the yearning nightingale (bulbul) who sings the rose (gul) in the hope of gaining its love. In innumerable poems in Persia, Turkish, Urdu, and related languages, the nightingale represents the longing soul-bird who is forever bound to the rose, the symbol of divine beauty. In as far as the nightingale never tires of singing of its love for the rose and patiently endures thorn pricks, it embodies the soul longing for eternal beauty. It is this longing that inspires the creativity manifest in the nightingale’s songs and melodies. For many poets, the unrequited longing of the nightingale is the highest state the soul can reach.”

Oh my goodness. Such scholarship and insights. John’s source: Ali Asani, “Birds in Islamic Mystical Poetry,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, And Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 171.

Further, he believes: “The spirit of the bulbul calls out to your habit of shores, I think, by way of another poet. A poet of love who would have delighted in the rhyming Persian words: ‘bulbul’ and ‘gul.’ I think of ‘unrequited love’ in the passage quoted as the kind of desire that stays on the path of desire, refusing to settle down. Every nomadist poet of love implicitly says, ‘Ne pas ceder sur son desir.’ Wanting no end to the transfers of energy between the nightingale and the rose. ‘Eternity has a structure great,’ writes Doveglion, ‘Only the rose’s eyes may meet.’” My goodness. Terrific.

And then Tony Tan consummates it all: “The Tausug ‘bulbul’ is not as sexy as the Binisaya ‘bulbul.’ It simply means hair, and is generic. ‘Bulbulan’ is somebody who is hairy. But there is certainly a Tausug word for the Binisaya ‘bulbul,’ and the word is [close your eyes] ULALANG.”

Finally, Tony, too, joins John in the realm of poetry: “Some 3 years ago I wrote to Marj (Evasco) and Therese Abonales about what M.H. Abrams, a scholar of the Romantic period, wrote in The Correspondent Breeze: A Romantic Metaphor: ‘If Romantic poets no longer refer to the nightingale by the Greek name, Philomel, some of them refer to it by the Persian name, Bulbul; Taylor cites one reader who said ‘he hath learnt, for the first time, from Lord Byron’s poetry, that two bulls make a nightingale.”

He appends that his friend Therese replied: “Haha it’s true jud diay Sir Tony, a ‘bulbul’’ is a songbird often mentioned in Persian poetry and thought to be a nightingale (Microsoft Bookshelf). I’m sure the English 4 [Intro to Lit] students would be rolling on the floor with laughter if you let them read John Keats’ ‘Ode to the Bulbul,’ or these words from Shakespeare: ‘Except I be by Silvia in the night/ there is no music in the bulbul.’

“Nyahahaha!” Now I’m not sure if that cackle’s from Tony or Therese. But no matter. OMG. What one learns from knowledgeable friends. We are all enriched. All about the bulbul.