For the Birds
I've written a few new posts this week, but none are quite ready for human consumption. Please enjoy this little tale from my archive.
I've very recently started birding. I love all things outdoors, but often times it's hard to get out to a State Park to go hiking. If I want to do more, it takes an even greater effort to drag totes of camping gear down from the attic for an outing or to hook up the kayak trailer for a day of fishing. I like it when I can quickly get into an activity with minimal effort. My wife and I call this reducing barriers of access to my hobbies. I blame my ADHD for this necessity.
My wife recently taught me about spoon theory. As I understand it, spoon theory is a framework for those with chronic conditions on how much effort it requires them to complete a task. A person wakes up with only so many spoons available to them on a given day. Once one runs out of spoons, they lack the energy to complete anything else and need a recharge. While I lack any discernible chronic conditions, I typically need a lot of spoons to get myself into the attic.
However, I have discovered that if I keep a pair of binoculars with a field guide by my back door, I can step out onto the porch, and immediately find a ton of wildlife to explore. I am blessed to currently reside on a size-able bit of acreage that belongs to my family. I can load up eBird and Merlin, grab the binoculars and disappear into the woods for an hour after work.
It has also been great to do with my two daughters. My youngest enjoys listening to the bird calls in Merlin, and using the kid's binoculars we borrowed from the library. We have Activity Backpacks for kids, and one of them is birding themed. (I bet your local library offers something similar. Go check it out!) My oldest child enjoys building up her life list in her own Merlin application.
My new found birding habit has led to the creation of a bird feeder, and to the cleaning out of an old bird bath I found buried in a long untended garden bed at my mom's house. I am working hard to coax my local avian friends in close so I can get a better look at them. I've yet to spot a bird of any kind at the feeder or bath, but I know it will happen eventually.
Today, after I got home from work, I went out to refill the bird bath, and got distracted by the sound of a woodpecker smashing its beak into a nearby oak tree. This distraction led to me roaming the family land for more than an hour looking for birds. ADHD strikes again.
I logged several lifers. (Lifer is birder parlance for seeing a bird for the first time in one's life.) I saw two types of woodpecker, a hairy and a downy, a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, a Yellow Rumped Warbler, and a few Blue-gray Gnatcatchers. I also saw several Cardinals, a Blue Jay, Crested Caracaras, and Eastern Bluebirds.
This little adventure landed me back at the house just in time for the frozen lasagna to come out of the oven.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
After I ate I realized I never refilled the bird bath as I had originally intended. So, I went out and took care of that before heading in to get the kids ready for bed, myself ready for work, and to bore my lovely wife with stories of my grand birding adventure. I had to show her pictures I attempted to take on my phone, that are more grain-y, than bird-y. I had to go through my life list and describe where I saw each bird. She could probably care less, but she gracefully listened to my exuberance, and I love her for that.
Not only am I learning about my local fauna, but birding has been good way to sneak in some exercise, which is all the more important as I step closer and closer to middle age. My neck has also been enjoying the change of angle. Instead of looking down at my phone, my head angles towards the sky scanning the tops of trees for birds I can barely see with the naked eye.
As a librarian, and avid reader, I shouldn't be surprised to see this new hobby of mine spilling over into my reading habits. I devoured Amy Tan's The Backyard Bird Chronicles. I loved the journal style entries of her nature journal. It reminded me of several other similar books I've read such as The Forest Unseen by David G. Haskell. If memory serves, it has been many years since I read it, Haskel journals about the same three foot patch of forest ground for a year comparing it to mandalas. Good book.
As I mull over my reading history I'm surprised I haven't landed on birding as a past time much sooner. David Coggins, John Graves, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Helen McDonald, Thomas McGuane, Kirk Wallace Johnson, Peter Wohlleben, and many more. While most of these do not cover birds directly they are all about the outdoors, plus, if you've ever read a book by CJ Box, you wouldn't be surprised to find that my favorite character is Nate Romanowski, a falconer.
I've also watched The Big Year a comedy starring Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson. The film follows their characters as the travel across the world competing with one another to complete a big year, which in birder parlance, I have learned, means spotting as many birds as one can in a single year. It is highly unlikely that I will ever attempt a big year, but the film was entertaining.
Inspired by Amy Tan I even decided to try my hand a nature journaling a few of the birds I saw. My artistic skills are elementary at best. My abilities have always leaned more towards the written rather than the visual. But I read that drawing the birds one sees helps one memorize them faster as you grow more familiar with their field markings, shape, bill structure, and behavior. So I gave it a shot. A few John Muir Laws and David Sibley videos later, and you could at least tell I was sketching a bird. My children thought my sketches were hilarious.
Until next time.
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