Watching the Birdwatchers
Watch out, birds, they’re coming for you.
Perhaps the only thing you can do on a nature hike that is more interesting than trying to find tiny, hidden, camouflaged birds is to watch the people trying to find tiny, hidden, camouflaged birds with a crusader’s zeal. I know — this is all rather meta and ironic, considering the fact that if you had to bin me into a category, I would fall into their “birder” category as opposed to the “non-birder” category. But something I didn’t realize until I started off on this hobby is that there are gradients, and serious birders sneer at common birdwatchers. Compare for example these two definitions found in the a Birding Glossary in a 1969 edition of Birding magazine:
Birder. The acceptable term used to describe the person who seriously pursues the hobby of birding. May be professional or amateur.
Bird-watcher. A rather ambiguous term used to describe the person who watches birds for any reason at all, and should not be used to refer to the serious birder.
People have a knack for constructing hierarchies with themselves on top. Any time a person stops to look at a bird should be celebrated, whether they know a sparrow from a wren. I find a walk through the woods to be infinitely more pleasurable the less encumbered I am with gadgets, and when gadgets are necessary, the less they come between you and the woods, the better. Because when you birdwatch, you are not looking simply at one bird on one branch. You are a participant in a biome that is full of life and movement; none of which can be captured staring down a three-foot telescope. I’d rather move a foot a minute to get as close to a bird as I can, watching its habits and quirks in the context of its environment.
But, birders can be a gregarious group, and usually behind their stoic, all-business exterior and extended focal-length, they are some of the nicest people you can find on a nature trail (nicer by far than the woman talking loudly on her cell phone, or the couple who leaves a dog poop bag on the side of the trail, or the runners who honestly should just stick to treadmills). So this series, “Watching the Birdwatchers” (don’t tell them I’m calling them birdwatchers), will be a celebration of the people I meet on the trail, cameras or binoculars or massive fucking telescopes in hand and a bird life-list in their pockets. There won’t be a shortage of elbowing of various ribs, as is necessary whenever anyone takes himself too seriously.