What Is Bird Watching?

Bird watching is a hobby. 

Bird watching is an obsession. A list-takers dream. A never-ending quest.

It’s trying not to always talk about birds

Bird watching is seeing a bird in every shaking leaf, every swaying branch, every minute motion.

It’s remembering geographic places not by landmarks but by which bird you saw there first. Craggy Gardens, NC = Chesnut-sided warbler. 

It’s being patient, waiting for a bird that might or might now come back into sight. It’s practicing shallow breathing and quiet steps. It’s a desire to blend in, to disappear. 

It’s knowing when to stay and wait.

It’s knowing when to leave. 

Bird watching is an escape. It’s moving meditation. It’s being part of something bigger. 

It’s remembering one’s small place in the world

Bird watching is hanging out at trash dumps and waste management ponds. It’s being surrounded by flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. It’s scrapes from wiggling through bushes, bug bites that last for days. It’s the occasional tick.

It’s seeing a flash of a bird and just from the color, shape, and behavior, knowing exactly what it is.

Bird watching is feeling like you finally have the hang of it.

It’s seeing a flash of a bird and just from the color, knowing it’s a warbler but not which warbler. It’s never seeing that bird again.

Bird watching is feeling like you don’t know a damn thing. 

It’s feeling proud of not using a guide to identify a bird. 

It’s constantly pulling out your Merlin ID to identify the bird call you should probably know by now. Yep. It’s a robin. 

Bird watching is an early morning. It’s a mist that clings to the trees and diffuses the light from a just risen sun. It’s the dawn chorus, the flurry of activity as the world wakes up. 

It’s the breath-caught-in-your-chest feeling of seeing a bird you’ve only read about. 

It’s spending an inordinate amount of time watching a cardinal just because she’s bathed in particularly beautiful light.

Bird watching is a sort of optimism, a sense that today will bring something new, something beautiful, something unexpected.