How a ‘Mindful Birding’ Camp Helped Me Reconnect With Nature

Hog Island is hallowed ground in the birding community. It was the launching pad of a puffin restoration project that is still going strong after more than 50 years, and it has been a gathering place for conservation educators and activists for decades—next year will be its 90th anniversary.

But to my family, Hog Island Audubon Camp has another meaning: It’s the place where my mom fell in love with nature. As a young reporter in the 1980s, she was sent there for a travel story and spent a week exploring the trees, moss, seaweed, and birds of the Maine coast. She loved it so much that she brought my family there when I was 10, and she’s been trying to go back ever since. 

This summer, she invited me to come with her to the island to celebrate her birthday. Of course, I said yes. She signed us up for a new four-day program focused on “mindful birding,” an approach that is less about identifying and tallying birds, and more about using birding as a tool to tune into your senses and slow down. 

My mom doesn’t consider herself a birder—she mostly encounters birds in her front yard, which she has gradually transformed from a lawn to a native garden. “I’m not good at remembering all the different colors and beaks and names,” she tells me. As someone who has never birded, neither am I. But just looking at birds and appreciating them for what they are? That sounded like something we would enjoy.

So in late August, with borrowed binoculars and rain pants, we drove seven hours north.

Birds Are the Anchors

The next morning, we gather for our first session with our fellow campers, some of whom are serious birders, while others are completely new to birding and were more drawn to the mindfulness angle. Our instructor, Holly Merkel, starts with a meditation. We listen to what’s around us: In the distance waves gently whoosh ashore as lobster boats motor by to collect their daily catch; closer, rain pats on the tent overhead, and birds chirp at the tube feeder hanging in front of us, sheltered by an apple tree. 

Merkel tells us how, as a cancer patient at age 32, she learned about using mindfulness techniques to manage pain. She realized she had been using the same tools of mindfulness—intentional awareness, honing her attention, and being curious—as a birder. She began to purposely combine the two, both on her own and in her work as a birding guide and wellness educator. “In traditional mindfulness practice, the breath is the anchor to the present moment,” Merkel says, “and with mindful birding, the birds are the anchors.”

We sit across from the feeder, and when a few small yellow birds appear, no one pulls out a field guide or app. I recognize them as goldfinches, although I don’t know what kind. But nailing the ID isn’t our goal. Instead, Merkel instructs us to simply watch the birds and make observations, like how they bob their tails with each hop. After a while, I realize I’m completely absorbed by these creatures, not thinking about anything else.

We carry this focused attention into our next session: nature journaling, led by artist Rebekah Lowell. Our task is to select an object from a tray and draw it, then write what we notice, what we wonder, and what the object reminds us of. I choose a spotted egg. I don’t know what type of egg it is, but that’s okay. The point is to get to know our objects through art and writing. I opt for watercolors, since the egg itself looks almost like its brown splotches were painted on. I’m surprised by how quickly an hour passes, and by how much detail exists on one egg.

Slowing Down

Have you ever taken two hours to hike three-quarters of a mile? That’s the surprisingly enjoyable pace that Rosy Tucker, the camp director, sets the next day as she leads our group across the 330-acre island. We walk slowly over tree roots that are slick from yesterday’s rain. There is no rush. Normally when I’m hiking, I have to stare at the ground the whole time to avoid tripping. But our unhurried pace allows me to look around.

The plush green moss coating the forest floor is my favorite part. As I’m taking in the damp woods, I see what looks like smoke rising from the ground, illuminated in the sunlight. I stop and point it out to a few campers around me. We realize the patch of moss in direct sun is warming, spiraling steam into the air. It feels good to stand in awe together.

My second favorite, after the moss, is a spindly lichen, which I learn is called old man’s beard. It hangs from most of the trees, like Spanish moss. Tucker tells us lichen grows abundantly here because the air is so clean. The forest itself smells fresh, even the decaying trees and leaves on the ground.

Later, when our forest bathing instructor, Sabrina Molander, tells us to each find a tree to stand with silently for a few minutes, I pick one covered with old man’s beard. Staring up at my chosen tree, I hear rustling, then a loud plink as something falls onto the roof of one of the cabins. Then more plinks.

On my way back to the group, I see a destroyed pinecone. Something has ripped off all its scales and left them in a pile. Could it be the red squirrels I’ve seen darting around? Is that what I heard scurrying up in the trees?

A later Google search confirms my hunch. It turns out red squirrels like to eat the seeds inside pine cones. I feel accomplished. I’ve discovered something simply by listening and observing, standing in the forest.

Zoom In, Zoom Out

Mindful birding, we’re learning, is about appreciating whatever you find around you, however unremarkable it might seem. Still, as we set out by boat to nearby Harbor Island on the last full day of camp, of course my mom and I are hoping for a glimpse of the area’s most famous bird: the Atlantic Puffin. Our instructors warn us a sighting isn’t likely; it’s past the typical breeding season, so most puffins have already left, heading to the open ocean off the coast of Cape Cod for winter.

But we’re lucky. As we round Eastern Egg Rock Island, where researchers live in tents all summer to monitor the seabirds, someone on the boat yelps. A lone puffin, incredibly cute, is floating nearby. Through my binoculars, I see two fish hanging out of its mouth. That means it has chicks, called pufflings, to feed.

Two Bald Eagles land on the island, scattering a swarm of gulls. The puffin seems to be waiting for the eagles to leave before going back to its family. It dives for more fish. I’m surprised it can fit more in its mouth, but another camper tells me it keeps the fish in rows inside its beak, like sardines in a tin.

Reveling in our good luck, we explore Harbor Island, then stop to rest. My mom naps on the cliffs while I return to my nature journal. I try a technique that Lowell taught us: On one page, I zoom out and paint the entire landscape. On the other, I zoom in to focus on a single detail, painting the lichen I’m sitting next to. Quickly, the lichen becomes a landscape of its own, expansive and varied as the water and the rocks before me.

When we leave Hog Island the next morning, I bring the exercise home with me. Back in Brooklyn, I pick up leaves in the park and stare at the sunset of colors that fits in my hand. I zoom out, gazing at the trees waving in the wind, and at the dappled shadows they make on the pavement.

My mom and I agree we still aren’t birders. But that’s not the point. She is going to keep tending her garden, replacing more and more turf grass with native blooms to help feed the birds. And I will keep noticing.