As I approach my 6th full year as a birder, I reflect back on what this hobby and passion has meant to me, and all that it means to me now. I think about the forests full of things I've learned and observed, and the skies full of things yet unlearned. And as I've pondered, I've come to realize I now have a much clearer understanding and answer to the question,
"Why birding?"
This wouldn't be so hard to believe. I mean, they're colorful, sing-songy, full of variety, and abundant in most every habitat. Their differences make them fun to compare and study, and to turn into metaphors and symbols. I could make an easy case of this just examining a few different birds...
Think of the Bald Eagle, with its impressive wingspan, its car-sized, branchy nest, its sunglow yellow eyes, and its ability to pluck what it needs from the earth. Who wouldn't be impressed?
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| Bald Eagle, Michigan's Upper Peninsula |
Or perhaps the Mockingbird strikes your fancy, its turntable repertoire of mimicked calls and random sounds floating fluid and without pause. It hops around subdivisions, farmlands, and cemeteries alike, tail flicked up as if to say, it's easy for me to be so many different ways.
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Northern Mockingbird begging for food
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Then, of course, there are birds for the darker and morbid sort (like me), the ones who won't win any pageants, but who score high on spiritual significance. Like the Turkey Vulture, whose very scientific name, Cathartes aura, rings like a mantra in my mind; whose body is designed to purify the earth then float away on swirls of warm air as if becoming vapor.
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| Turkey Vulture |
There are the tiny and most proudly patterned warblers;
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Blackburnian Warbler
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The tireless, shrieking birds of the sea;
The thrushes who sing like harps, even producing two notes at once;
The lightspeed falcons;
The hidden ones - owls, nightjars, and grouse;
The Alice in Wonderland shorebirds...
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Whimbrel, Pointe Mouillee, MI
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The list goes on and on! In terms of character and appearance, I'm quite sure there must be a bird for everyone. But even with all this variety, exotic excitement, and flashiness; these things are not my why.
You see, I was born to notice patterns. I was made to look for connections; to find and observe small details that others miss; to recognize beauty oft ignored. This noticing and attentiveness goes inward, when I journal, track my monthly cycle trends, or follow my breath and body movements in meditation and yoga. But it also goes outward. When I'm taking photos, I am, as Frank T. Rios says, "A [wo]man who stands against the mountains and thinks of pebbles." My eyes and other senses are trained on small movements, tiny textures, and soft sounds. And with Nature, as in with myself, I am always looking for cycles.
Birds are, above any animal I can think of, the perfect representations of seasons and cycles. When you get to know the birds, you get to know where they move, and when. While much of the world bases their time off what calendar holiday approaches (or even worse, when the stores decide those holidays are approaching), I live in a world of avian seasons. Birds don't generally move due to weather (except in extreme cases like with storms and food shortages). Rather, they migrate based on length of day. Their bodies respond to the sun and moon and stars like ours like ours lean into the televised news. It doesn't matter what is going on in our politics, our culture, our religion - birds move with the seasons as if following ancient scrolls.
In my studies of them, I've learned when the southern birds come north during spring, or when the birds must be nesting, hunkered down and quiet in summer. I wait for the same, but less colorful birds to descend back southward in autumn, and welcome the northerners in winter. There's always some pocket or patch of birds moving north or south, and I come to expect their revisitings. There's those benchmark birds I wait for at the beginnings of seasons - the first Killdeer calling before spring, or that lovely vernal day when overnight, the marshes are soaked in Red-winged Blackbird song. When the Peewees are calling, it's quintessential summer. When Juncos and American Tree Sparrows appear at the feeders, winter is nigh. And once winter hits, it's time to find those snow-named birds, like Snowy Owls, Snow Geese, and Snow Buntings.
To learn the rhythms of the birds, their comings and goings, is to become one with the environment. It's to understand the rise and fall, the ebb and flow. It's to remember our connection to Nature. For me, there is comfort in cycles, and I much prefer the ones which move on wings.
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| Forster's Terns |
