Birds are often used in traditional bonsai display to give a suggestion of where the tree is.
Is the bonsai in a field? In a swamp? By the ocean? On a mountain?
Usually we use an accent to fulfill this need. An aster to suggest a field. A sundew for a bog.
Birds offer the same utility.
In Japan a common bird to use in display is the cormorant, a year-round resident of large bodies of water. If you see a cormorant, you know you’re not on a mountaintop.
Bronze of a Cormorant by Henk Fresen.
Here’s a winter display in Mr. Shinji Suzuki’s tokonoma, with a deer on the scroll. Swap that deer out for a bird and you have a unique opportunity.
Birds not only inhabit unique habitats, but also seasons. They are a powerful evocation of seasonality, which is a key element of bonsai display. Not just where the tree is, but when.
American Robin. Image courtesy L. Karney, USFWS Digital Library.
Some birds are ubiquitous, like the American Robin. I’ve been amazed to find them not only where we expect them, tugging at a worm in a lawn, but also on a bare mountaintop, hopping along a coastal dune, or on top a 200-foot Doug Fir.
This makes the Robin useless as a suggestion of place. But in many areas the Robin migrates, which makes them great for seasonal suggestion—much like a flowering accent.
There are times of the year, often only a couple months, when migratory birds are present, gobbling up caterpillars or sand fleas to fuel up and fly on. At other times you don’t see them.
For display seasonality, it hardly gets better than a migrating bird. 75% of birds in temperate climates migrate to some degree. Northern hemisphere birds fly south in the fall and north in the spring, the reverse in the Southern Hemisphere. And then some fly between hemispheres.
This Bar-tailed Godwit is a migration athlete—18,000 miles round trip, annually, from Alaska to New Zealand—which makes human snowbirds look like amateurs.
Bronze by Henk Fresen of Long-tailed Tits, which are non-migratory, year-round residents of Europe; a bird to pair with a hawthorn or other shrubby hedgerow plant, which is the bird’s habitat.
Wilson’s Warblers travel not only for nesting sites and to reduce competition, but for food. Being insect eaters, they are only at their northern nesting sites when it’s warm and insects are around.
The Violet-green Swallow is another migratory insect-eater. In cooler climates you would only see them in the warm months. And, they are usually seen near water. A bird where you’d get both place and seasonality in a display. (Several of these photos are mine, Instagram: @michael_hagedorn_biotics)
Migratory bird options are great for a display when these birds are passing through or breeding in your area. The caveat of course is finding a scroll or object with such specificity.
Some painters might make an image specific to your display desires. Also consider tasteful photos. In Australia I saw several photographs in the convention display instead of a scroll, which made me think twice about their use.
So there are two main uses for birds in display: season and place. If you employ a friend to paint a Western Meadowlark, above, it means your tree is in a field somewhere. Not by an oceanside or in a rocky canyon.
Using birds in display is an opportunity to study the timing and habitat intersection of birds and trees. Of course at a show we may well get the eye-roll and the comment, “Well, who will know?” But you will know. And if you share about your display, then others will know.
Though maybe the best reason is that it’s fun.
SEPTEMBER 2025 BULLETIN
- Join me at the East Bay Bonsai Society’s free annual show, Oakland, CA, September 20-21, Saturday 10-4, Sunday 11-4, Lakeside Garden Center