Birding

3 min read

The bird hopped over to a branch closer to my line of sight.  It was beautiful, with a puffed-out chest and a tiny head held upright and steady even as the branch swayed under its slight weight.  The chest had some spots; must be a thrush, since they do pass through NY this time of year.    But which one?  I only had to take out my phone and open the birding app to check out the choices.  But as I reached down to my pocket, the bird stirred.  I could not move lest I lose sight of it.  It then moved even closer, to barely a few feet away from my head.   The little creature seemed to be challenging me to just absorb its features as they were, without classification and prior knowledge.     The itch to know more pulled at me strongly, but I couldn’t take the risk of losing such an unusual encounter.  Slowly I managed to let go my impulses and just enjoy the quiet moment with the bird.   Definitely a thrush, possibly a hermit thrush with slight move of its tail.

I took up looking at birds a few years ago, taking advantage of backyard birds that regularly visit trees and shrubs at our upstate home.   The variety of birds is staggering and with enough tries I was slowly able to begin to identify some of them by sight and then some by sound.     I armed myself with binoculars, bird books and even sounds apps.  When the Iphone offered birding apps, it was like magic being able to see a bird in the field and be able to refer to the classifications right away.    A walk in the fields was now not just a lonely amble, but one filled with multiple little surprises of rustle, twitters and flashing colour.   Robins, finches, blackbirds, starlings, woodpeckers, sparrows, warblers, even low flying falcons and swooping vultures.  At times, I would find myself in the middle of a passing flock of feeding birds, and be spun around to try to take it all in.  

As I grew more in confidence, somewhere along the way, there came an expectation that I should be able to identify the birds.  I was hard on myself when many times even after a good look, I wasn’t able to place the bird.   On walks my friends would turn expectantly to me any time there was a squawk in the trees.    I was still too honest to just bluff it, so I felt the pressure of not knowing.  Knowledge went quickly from a point of acquisition to a point of frustration.    And the frustration of not knowing would get in the way of just seeing.

I was in the transitional phase of being more than a dilletante and yet not quite an expert.   However, there was now an insidious attachment to the identity of being knowledgeable, about being dedicated enough to a pursuit of knowledge, to be not just a person liking birds but an actual birder!    The walks on the fields were now often less peaceful, with every failure sitting heavy on my mind.  Doing so, the pure pleasure of just receiving information, without needing to master it, was slipping away.

This is a common trap that we fall into, where the pursuit of knowledge slides into the pursuit of an identity of being knowledgeable. 

This morning though, this little thrush was having none of it.  I could either watch and admire its being, or retreat to the theoretical classification of where it sits in the bird kingdom.   I had to just enjoy the moment in my ignorance.    

A little later, another tiny hopping bird flew right past my face, and into the shadows of the cherry tree beside me.  By the way it flitted, it must have been the kinglet.  But again, I had to choose to watch it and sacrifice my bird app.   I couldn’t tell if it was the ruby-crowned or the golden-crowned.  Aah well, its at least a kinglet. 

When I did get a moment to look up my app, I was satisfied my first friend was a hermit thrush, but for the second, I realized I had missed looking at the eye-ring to know which kinglet.   

As I walked back towards home, in the treetop, I saw a lovely flash of yellow of some warbler. Too far and not a chance of guessing which one.

So, one identified, one close and one not a chance.  Not a bad morning.  Even more because I was re-learning how to appreciate the beauty for its own sake, without the burden of knowledge.  Like a child again.