Margaret Atwood has given C$1m (£540,000) to Western University in London, Ontario, to establish the Graeme Gibson chair in avian biology, honouring her late partner's love of birds. The gift, announced on Friday, aims to better understand the fundamental processes that shape how birds move, adapt and behave in an environment undergoing profound transformation.
Atwood, the bestselling Canadian author known for her speculative fiction, set up the observatory with Gibson, also a novelist, on Pelee Island – the southernmost community in Canada. The island sits at the nexus of two important migration routes, making it a destination for birds travelling thousands of kilometres each year. It is accessible only by boat and plane, 20 miles off the Ontario mainland in Lake Erie.
A Lifelong Connection to Birds
Gibson died in 2019. In his final years, vascular dementia overtook his ability to journal about the birds, but he still watched them daily. Atwood wrote in a foreword to Gibson's book, The Bedside Book of Birds: “Our back yard feeder and our birdbath were attracting only sparrows and robins and grackles and the occasional pigeon, but he didn’t care: every bird was worthy of attention.”
Gibson's “spark bird” – the species that triggered his lifelong love of birdwatching – was the red-tailed hawk, frequently spotted on the island. Atwood and Gibson once dressed up for a party as Odin's ravens, Thought and Memory, wearing black gloves and beaks made from black construction paper.
Advancing Avian Science
The university has emerged as a global leader in avian research, developing the world's first hypobaric climatic wind tunnel for bird flight to study how they move through different types of air. Chris Guglielmo, co-director of the advanced facility for avian research at Western University, which received the gift, said many mysteries remain: “We have a lot of descriptive understanding of what happens when we manipulate the magnetic fields, for example, the bird changes its orientation. We know they have these senses. But how they actually work is still a big mystery, and very exciting for people to try to study.”
Guglielmo added that the gift was a “validation” of the work done by the university's scientists. “It made me feel so good that we're not only reaching and having impact in the scientific community, but that more broadly in the public sphere,” he said.
Threats to Bird Populations
Canada and the US have lost nearly 3bn birds since 1970. While some species, including ducks and birds of prey, have surged in number, birds that travel thousands of miles each year have dropped by nearly 30%. The blackpoll warbler, which breeds in the northern boreal forest and embarks on a nonstop journey of almost 1,800 miles over open water to South America, has seen its population drop more than 80% in the last five decades, making it the fastest declining songbird.
Atwood says the four biggest threats to birds – windows, cats, toxic pollution and environmental destruction of their habitats – are all things humans can help stop. The first two are easier to address, but the latter are more challenging: “People think: we can cut down this forest, and we'll just make another forest over there. It's not going to be the same. Birds have specific habitats that they need, so it's not like spreading butter on a piece of toast.”
Atwood remains optimistic about the future: “Let's say hope is a built-in human characteristic. Unless you're deeply depressed, you wake up every morning thinking, what will this day bring? Maybe it will be a chocolate bar. Maybe there'll be some surprises. If our ancestors didn't have that, we probably wouldn't be here.”
She pointed to young people's engagement with nature: “The passion is built in. They're very interested in anything that moves, anything outside, and unless some grown-up teaches them to be afraid of such things, that interest will continue. We are part of the natural world. It's your choice of how to be in it.”
Birding is surging in interest among young people, Atwood noted: “If there's no young people interested in a thing, whatever that thing is, it will die out. The fact that it's not dying out, but it's going in the other direction, is quite hopeful.”
Atwood has long warned that societies can allow the systems that sustain them to erode: “Utopia is impossible, but if you don't believe in the ability to attain something better, you will inevitably end up in a dystopia. Because dystopia is quite possible. Or to put it another way, we're much better at creating hell than we are at creating heaven. Although I also think heaven would be quite boring.”
