Professor Robinson recorded all his lectures at a time before the start of the Spring 2021 semester, and so he could not be anything more than a droning voice and a thin, crooked figure confined to a computer screen; that was Skylar Zhang’s opinion. She’d wake at seven for his eight o’clock video, kindly distributed by the TA, who was stated in an email to preside over all of the coursework. The world was always alive outside. She would hear sparrows and starlings in the courtyard, all crying for a potato chip, which one bright individual would find and take to the space beneath the gutter overhang. Skirmishes of Shakespearean caliber broke among their ranks for the crumbs of the chip. Yet the birds were her only company. Her roommate had deferred her second semester; there was no one to talk to as Professor Robinson’s lectures filled the silence with ornithology.

Ornithology was science, not poetry. Professor Robinson had opened with that dismal line, and Skylar wondered if it were too late to replace this course with another English elective. But as she had resigned herself to merely tolerating the lectures—the TA was quick to email those who did not watch them—the second week of ornithology showed a different Robinson. The scholar in him was stifled; he seemed to look around past the camera at some points, chewing his lip as though irritated with his own lesson. And then, on the Thursday of the second week, Professor Robinson sat upon a desk moved to the front of the classroom, smiled into the camera, and said, “Man, you’re really sitting there listening to a guy called ‘Robinson’ talk about birds.” His teeth were so white against his dark skin. His eyes were kindly crinkled behind his glasses—Skylar had not seen much of them, as the camera had not been arranged properly, and his head was cut out for much of the first week’s lectures.

“Robin’s Son. Yeah, and now I’m a professor of birds. That’s called an aptronym, when your name reflects some part of your vocation. That’s destiny.”

Skylar imagined herself following career directives from her name—she would end up a pilot, or a professional skydiver. Then she imagined her name on the spine of a novel—would she be published under ‘Skylar Zhang?’ Did that ring nicely? Perhaps she would go with Chen Zhang as a favor to her parents. Skylar Chen Zhang, who never found a name as fitting as Robinson the Ornithologist.

“Except there’s no such thing as destiny. Look, look at this.” He struggled to hold a heavy book up to the camera. “Okay, you can’t see it…these cameras are new to me. Let me draw on the board.”

There, bred from his hand and a broken piece of chalk, a falcon took flight, fantastically white against the dark green board. He drew it methodically—he must have drawn this falcon a hundred times. Though his back was to the camera, and the drawing partially obscured by his arm, Skylar could see that when he dotted the eyes with a lifelike shimmer, he looked into them and was pleased with his creation. Skylar’s fingers pinched as though closed around a pen—no, she had only dabbled in drawing. Robinson was an artist.

“Five-minute sketch. There’s a lot you can do with five minutes,” he said. Skylar knew the feathers were all strikes and dashes, the talons quick little curves, but the falcon was beautiful. An illusion of lines blended into themselves.

“So this is Mr. Peregrine Falcon. And, as we were discussing at the end of the last video, Mr. Peregrine was extinct in our region. Can you imagine something so immaculate just gone one day? Because human beings decided to use DDT? Well, I didn’t need to imagine it. I was a student finding them dead as part of class projects.”

Skylar went to leave a comment like she was accustomed to doing for English, a simple “Amazing!” to let him know she was paying attention. But she remembered he was a recording and wrote her comments down to be emailed later; he deserved to know his drawing was pretty.

“At a college not too far from here, a man named Heinz Meng bred these birds back into existence. And it was hard; he kept losing them, they were poisoned, shot. He did something called ‘wild hack’ where he basically gives them a…a sort of building where they can return to to be safe at night. Can you imagine, you’ve bred these precious birds from falconers’ stock, and the whole damn species is riding on them? You’ve seen them, all white and puffy coming out the egg, and you have to let them go. Trust that they’ll make it…that’s not destiny. That’s love.”

Skylar looked at her hands, imagining a helpless baby falcon sitting there, needing her warmth. She searched “baby falcons” to satisfy the urge to see them. They were as precious as the professor described.

“So there’s no such thing as destiny, because we reversed the damage. We brought them back from the brink of a death we caused. We—and that’s you, and me, and your mama—have to be better stewards of animals. All of them, not just the pretty ones. Because when they’re gone, they’re gone. My daughter, Amanda, she’s a little older than you guys; I don’t want her becoming an adult in a world void of peregrine falcons. Take care folks, have a nice day. See you next time in bird class.”

Skylar knew she would not be able to stop thinking about baby falcons for the rest of the afternoon. She found the TA’s email, which contained the weekly assignment. A field recording of a bird on campus: that was all that was required. She left to buy a bag of chips, then returned.

Remembering her parents’ words, which often ate like woodpeckers at the bark of her mind, Skylar drafted an email to the professor introducing herself. Before she had left home, her mother and father drilled their favorite advice: “Make good relationship with your teacher, and be respectful.” They both managed to keep in contact with their professors back in China; her parents were great successes, masters of philosophy and rhetoric. Skylar (Chen, as she was to them) earned their pride when she declared an English major, only she had not officially declared it. She had never officially declared anything in her life—when had it gotten so difficult, to live up to their expectations?

The TA responded to her email, punctuating their signature with a colon and a parenthesis. The professor must have been busy.

Bird class was becoming her favorite, and English was growing impatient with her, difficult to work with. A blank midterm paper loomed above her; she had to write on Shakespeare, but how could she, as he was no man she could easily conceive as being real, not like Faulkner or Hemingway. It sometimes seemed easier to translate the titter of sparrows in the campus courtyards than it was to decipher Shakespeare’s English. A long S, curved and dashed like the sound holes of her violin—what use could letter variations have possibly served the Englishmen of centuries past? Surely her parents never suffered through the unstandardized spellings and overzealous drama. But Shakespeare did love birds—that was a comfort to her.

She did not expect Shakespeare to come up during Professor Robinson’s lecture.

“In 1877, some Shakespeare lovers decided to bring over all the birds Shakespeare ever mentioned. They were called the American Acclimatization Society. That’s a sick sort of ego when you think European nature is better than what you’ve got around you. You think Shakespeare wouldn’t have crapped his long johns at the sight of a moose? I know I would.”

She snorted, imagining a sixteenth-century English stage bombarded with North American megafauna. Exit, pursued by a moose.

“So this American Acclimatization Society let about a hundred starlings go in New York City. Shakespeare mentioned starlings once. One time. And now there’s two million in this country, and they kill other birds and compete for nesting holes. That’s what I meant when I said ornithology is science, not poetry. We can’t be so in love with the idea of nature that we forget what nature really is. And I didn’t make that up myself; my father did—he was a poet from Harlem.”

She knew then what she would write. Old Literature and New Environmentalism—she ought to thank the professor for the paper idea. But again, he did not reply to her email.

It was Thursday once more; how these days bled together, and where the time went, Skylar did not know. The starlings’ young were screaming beneath the gutters. Perhaps she’d take one for a pet, as Professor Robinson said it was legal.

“These bastards you all know well, these are house sparrows. Passer domesticus. And they’re all over the world. Originally from Eurasia. Another species we introduced where they shouldn’t be. Just like starlings, they’re very aggressive.”

The drab little birds were outside Skylar’s window, hiding their ferocity beneath shiny eyes and brown caps. One returned Skylar’s gaze for a moment, its head upon a swivel. How could such a blunt, angled beak and tiny frail wings crush the skulls of other cavity nesters? All birds have their secrets.

“House sparrows have no home, yet they live everywhere. Their physiology is different from their ancestors. There’s nothing to these New York house sparrows about the Mediterranean Basin, and if they were suddenly transported there, they wouldn’t even recognize it. I understand that, I really do. But I always end up talking about philosophy when I really should be talking anatomy, so I’ll save that story.”

On her screen, edited notes superimposed themselves over the lecture, correcting outdated information. Their increasing frequency and proximity to the professor’s face and his drawings on the board annoyed Skylar. Had the professor misspoken? In lectures following, the amendments grew in number; at one point a lecture cut midway to a black screen with bulleted information, cold, aloof. How disrespectful, to cut off the professor mid-sentence. Did it matter if his taxonomy was one bird-ancestor off? She briefly wondered if the TA was responsible, and if they could do their work in a way that interrupted the lectures less. But when the professor returned, the audio cracked, startling Skylar. He continued, oblivious to the words edited over his drawing of a red-crowned crane.

Skylar wrote another email to Professor Robinson probing him for what he meant by his sympathy for the sparrows. “I think I understand, too,” she typed, “because sometimes I have dreams where I’m floating above Beijing, and I almost see it clearly because my parents have described it so many times. But it’s always a little fuzzy. Best, Skylar.” A short time after, the TA replied.

“That is fascinating, Skylar. I am sure Dr. Robinson would be touched to hear it.”

So can you forward that to him? she wanted to type, but she knew her parents would not approve.

For her birthday, Skylar was gifted a red envelope from her grandmother. It was the money she was meant to receive at Lunar New Year, but at that point Grandmother hadn’t yet been vaccinated. At the dining table the topic of sparrows was brought up; Skylar’s mother recounted the tragedy of the Four Pests Campaign, in which Mao Zedong ordered the complete elimination of sparrows. It became a tragedy only some time later, when there were no hungry little birds to eat up the crop-loving locusts. Imagine them, gone. They were neither beautiful nor powerful, or at least their beauty and strength was undetectable to the human eye. They had performed their duty according to the directive in their little brains. They were punished for a crime they never commit, as were all the Chinese dead who starved in their absence.

“My professor says the sparrows live all over the world now,” Skylar said.

“Maybe they leave China and find a better home, like we did,” said her father. But that had been his choice. She did not say this, though; there were too many noodles to eat.

“I really like my English professor. And my ornithology professor—he’s my favorite.”

Her parents found that intriguing, though they talked little about birds for the rest of the evening. Skylar found herself looking forward to Professor Robinson’s video lectures and willed the long weekend to pass.

Spring bowed to summer. Skylar watched Professor Robinson’s final lecture on a sunny, grass-smelling Thursday.

“Goodbye, kids. I hope you had a good time in my course. I hope you liked my drawings and my philosophy…I think in my next life I’ll be a philosopher. Anyway, have a wonderful rest of your school year. This technology…man, it’s something, isn’t it? I wonder what you’ll have to work with in the future.” There was no one to say farewell to, no peers waving into their computer cameras. She had seen their names only a few times when she submitted work online. Later, she sent Professor Robinson another email, wishing him health and offering her phone number, as her parents had instructed her to do. “In case he ever need help, you will be there,” her father had told her.

Skylar received an email from the Biology Department.

Dear Skylar Zhang,

Thank you for completing your coursework for BIO300: Ornithology, and for keeping Dr. Jonathan Robinson’s dreams alive. Dr. Robinson was a scientist, a poet, and a philosopher; diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2000, his wishes were to record a course series for future students of his alma mater. He passed away in the spring of 2001, surrounded by family and friends.

Due to their outdatedness, the Biology Department will be retiring Dr. Robinson’s pre-recorded lectures. You can access them at any point at the school library. We welcome you to join our memorial service and Dr. Robinson’s official retirement party held on Wednesday, May 28th. A local wildlife rehab facility will be releasing a peregrine falcon at the South Courtyard.

Thank you,

Amanda Robinson

Associate Professor and Chair

Department of Biology