Birding
> Watching
Birds >
Birds
Why Watch Birds?
When people ask, “Why do you watch birds?” we
Auduboners all offer our own personal explanations: they’re
interesting, beautiful, inspiring, fascinating, and so on.
But perhaps one of the most delightful lists ever produced
is the following essay by Jack Conner, published by Bird
Watcher’s Digest, July/August 1984, reprinted
here by permission.
 |
| © jefflarsen.com |
Eight Reasons Why We Bird
1) It sharpens your sight. Before you
know it, you learn to see the ruby-crowned kinglet, to identify
the ever-so-slight upswing in the bill of the greater yellowlegs,
and to spot the half-inch wide band on the breast of the bank
swallow as he twirls past you at 40 miles per hour.
2) It encourages you to explore the world.
You ride out on chartered fishing boats with fishermen who
are wondering why anyone would spend 30 bucks not to fish
but to look for something called “shearwaters,”
which, when finally found after nine solid hours of looking,
turn out to be only some long-winged dark birds that skim
across the waves and disappear in a minute.
 |
| © Carl Cook |
3) It gives you something to write about.
“Dear Mom, How are you? It snowed here the other day,
but we still have two kingfishers down on the pond. Against
the white they seem especially beautiful…”
4) It makes you an authority in the neighborhood.
People you have never met will bring you robins and orioles
their cat has caught, and ask, “What’s the wingspan
of an eagle?”
5) It helps you to treasure a moment –
that June evening, for example, when you find on the branch
of a fallen tree, his plumage dark and golden, one eye closed
and one eye watching you back, your first Chuck-will’s-widow.
6) It provides you with opportunities
to meet someone like my friend John Henry Hintermister, who
keeps his life list locked in a steel box in case of fire;
who every spring in the second week of March, hikes the route
Frank
M. Chapman hiked in 1890 in search of the now-possibly
extinct Bachman’s warbler. John comes home exhausted,
tick, in his hair, and says, “I’m only going to
chase that !@#$% bird for 15 more years. If I don’t
see one by then, I’ll give up.”
 |
| © Carl Cook |
7) It makes you politically active. You
will write intricately argued, adrenalin-fueled letters to
your congressman demanding that something be done so people
will stop littering, throwing rocks at gulls, building condominiums,
driving airboats in the Everglades, spraying insecticides,
and sawing down trees.
8) Finally, it can save your life. One
day you will be walking home from work, depressed. Your kid
has the flu, the car’s clutch needs to be fixed, and
tomorrow is your birthday. Another year has passed and once
again you have not triumphed at anything, really.
Then you glance at the sky in despair
and right there, right over your head, blessing that particular
air space on your street forever, is the world’s most
beautiful bird! With pearly white head, black-and-white wings,
long forked tail, it circles slowly, a hundred feet up, eating
dragonflies, tearing off the wings and letting them flutter
down.
You toss your briefcase in a bush, grab
the first person to come along, and shout, “A swallow-tailed
kite! A swallow-tailed kite!” until he, too, looks up
and blinks at the sight, and knows suddenly that he must buy
some binoculars and become a bird watcher himself.
 |
| © jefflarsen.com |
|
