The Quiet Days

I’d come to the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge for one bird—the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker (more on them in a later post). I saw two or three as I was slowly driving down a forest service road. It’s going to be a birdful day, I thought to myself. I was smug. Hell, I thought smugly, I might even see a Bachman’s Sparrow. 

I parked at a gate near Pond 2A. The road continued past the gate into an old-growth pine forest. I began walking. 

Ten minutes later, the rocks crunch and rattle under my shoes. Some leaves rasp against each other. The wind barely blows through the tops of the pine trees. 

There are regular calls. The car alarm Cardinal. The melodic Blue-headed Vireo. The namesake chip of the Chipping Sparrow—the same sparrow that shoots from the edge of the road to perch on a nearby tree before again vanishing into the overgrown grass of the longleaf pine forest. 

Otherwise, there ain’t a lot else. It was a Quiet Day. 

The Quiet Days. The days where the birds seem to be anywhere but where I am. The days that I see a handful of species only a handful of times. 

There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for the Quiet Days. I’ve had them in the winter, in the midst of a sweltering summer. They’ve come on still days and the blustery days. They’ve come at spots that have been traditionally birdful in the past. 

As far as I can tell, the Quiet Days just happen, and there’s not really an explanation or a way to anticipate them. 

In the early days of my birdwatching, I’d get frustrated by the Quiet Days, especially if I’d traveled to a particular spot. I was here to watch birds, so where the hell are the birds?  It felt like a waste. I wasn’t enjoying myself. 

At some point, I realized I needed to shift my perspective. I began to approach each outing with a different set of expectations, taking the pressure off myself to bird the right way.

I have one of those half joke half truth sayings when folks ask me about the Quiet Days - A bad day birding is still a nice walk in the woods. There are so many awe-inspiring sights and sounds when we open ourselves up to them. 

So, on this Quiet day, I listened to what sounds there were. I stood on a bridge over a trickle of a stream. I caught sight of an Eastern Fence Lizard and identified a neat plant called the stinking trillium. 

Mostly, I stopped. I stopped moving and overthinking. And I stopped worrying that I wasn’t doing it right. Because whatever it is, it’s exactly as it should be.