Something most people don’t know about me: I like birdwatching (or, as the kids call it nowadays, “twitching.”)
It’s not a fact I usually lead with.
For some reason, the fact that I occasionally still listen to techno music and wear slightly-baggier-than-average shirts has given me the delusion that I am still cool (whatever that means), a frankly ludicrous proposition to anyone who knows me, but one I entertain nonetheless. Alas, birdwatching, for all its strengths, is not traditionally seen as a cool activity, being one I share with my 86-year-old great-aunt Wendy.
I’m also conscious that my process bears a distinctively amateurish hue. My approach is the opposite of methodical: I aimlessly wander around, and if I see or hear a bird, I will try and identify it. Birdwatching is never my primary objective (if I stand motionless in a field for more than 20 minutes, my knees start to hurt, and I will be thinking about my next meal); instead, I treat it as a supplement to whatever the primary reason I am outside is: a hike, a dog-walk, etc.
For someone who claims to enjoy birdwatching, my birding knowledge can be best categorised as requiring improvement. I cannot tell you off the top of my head the genus and species of the Fluffy-backed Tit-Babbler (yes, that’s real), and heaven forbid I try and identify the difference between a chiffchaff and a willow warbler (it’s the leg colour you idiot.) I recently embarrassed myself in front of my fiance's parents, mistaking a long-tailed tit for a wagtail (this still gives me sleepless nights).
Given these glaring gaps in my knowledge, I’m always wary that I will one day stumble into a Good Will Hunting style showdown with someone who genuinely loves birdwatching and can lay down some twitchdown (the birdwatching community’s term for smackdown (*disclaimer: may be false*)) on my clueless bird-noob arse:
“Of course, that’s your contention. You're an amateur bird watcher. You just finished reading some basic field guides, probably by Bill Bailey, and so naturally, that's what you trust until next month when you come across the RSPB. That'll last until sometime in your second year of bird watching, then you'll be out there in the wild, regurgitating facts about conservation and the beak-shaping effects of weather patterns.”
– Will Hunting on birds (probably)
So perhaps I don’t deserve the “twitcher” label quite yet.
What, then, does birdwatching offer me? If I’m not doing it properly, what’s the point in doing it at all?
The answer, I expect, lies in the way that the strange little wires in my strange little brain are connected.
I am not a very ‘present’ person, being usually ten layers of abstraction away from whatever I’m supposed to be looking at. This is a fancy way of saying that I often live in my head.
Hearing an unusual birdsong, pausing, digging out my phone or a book, and working out what the bird is, connects me to nature in a way that I am wholly unused to. It requires me to actively engage with my surroundings. It forces me to think outside myself: to listen, to see, to sense.
Even the infamous wagtail incident (tail-gate?) was, in reality, a rewarding experience: it temporarily shook me out of whatever existential musings I was grappling with and forced me to engage with the world in front of me.
This has long as well as short-term benefits. A bird sighting pierces the great expanse of abstract, unreliable memory with a little, razor-sharp shard of vivid, sensory experience. The hot, salty embarrassment at mistaking a turkey for a vulture while on a long Californian hike. The iridescent flash of a kingfisher’s wings breaking through the dull grey backdrop of a wintery Edinburgh skyline.
Each such sighting has become a little Moment; a bridge from the abstract to the tangible.
Cast in this light, my fumbling, clueless approach to birdwatching reveals a surprisingly profound truth…
It was never really about the birds at all.
Just don’t tell any twitchers I said that.
Have an enchanting week!
This was the best thing I read this week. I never thought I could enjoy reading about bird watching so much. Such a fun piece, the Good Will Hunting reference was the cherry on top. I also feel a new appreciation for twitchers (am I getting that right?)
"It was never really about the birds at all." Love that! Really enjoyed your piece and self-exploration.