Birding

I got a new camera this month, the Nikon P950. I told myself it was for bird photography, which was mostly true. What I really wanted was a reason to leave the house and go somewhere quiet. So that’s where I headed on the first day off I had after buying it.

The morning started the way all mornings you don’t have to work should start. Hunter sausage and a zero sugar energy drink from the gas station, and Dunkin’s peppermint hot chocolate in a paper cup. This is what passes for ritual now. Not meditation or sacrifices. Just small offerings to the gods of Leave-Me-Alone.

I’m learning there are levels to this birding thing. At first, you just want to be able to identify birds. You’re essentially a toddler with binoculars. Then you want to see new birds. Lifers. The first hit is free, the second turns into a spreadsheet.

Then you want to list them. You start remembering dates. Places. Weather. You remember exactly where you were when you saw a Yellow-billed Cuckoo the way other people remember births or historical events.

Then you want to photograph them.

This is where things really start going sideways. Because now it’s not enough to witness beauty. You need to possess proof of it. A digital rectangle of captured wildness so you can look at that bird whenever you want, for as long as you want.

And then you start hunting birds.

You hunt specific species. You learn their habits. Their preferred habitats. You go looking for them the way deer hunters go looking for a target buck. Somewhere in there you realize the birds are not the point anymore. Birding isn’t about adding birds to a list. It’s about seeing things that happen when people aren’t around.

As the great Benjamin Franklin said, “Many men go birding all their lives without knowing it is not birds they are after.”

The thing I love about birds is that they’re wild and completely uninterested in you. In a lot of ways, they’re like ghosts. Most people don’t notice they’re even there as they go about their daily routine, and that’s exactly how the birds like it.

On the way home, I got stuck behind a lowered white Dodge Ram with offset wheels and black smoke blasting out the tailpipe every time the driver touched the gas pedal. “HONK IF YOU WANT TO FUCK” was handwritten on the bumper in black permanent marker like a manifesto for a dying civilization.

I sat at the light behind him, getting ready to hold my breath for the inevitable burst of smog. A sparrow-sized bird landed on the power line over the intersection. I reached for my camera on the passenger seat as the light turned green. The truck disappeared into a cloud of smoke and I held my breath. By the time I pointed the camera up, the bird was gone.