Why I bird

Someone I respect posed the following set of questions to a Facebook group "I'm always trying to understand other birders and what motivates them or why they are in this. We have seen such an explosion of numbers in the "birding world" over the last 15 to 20 years that I'm trying to understand why. Is it just being outdoors? is it the photography angle (due to the revolution in photography because of digital technology). Is it the competitive side or birding (listing), or is it "The Big Year" effect? Or is it something else completely that I'm totally missing?" There were more questions on the friend's post but the first set of questions is rich enough that I felt it most appropriate to answer these separate from the other questions.

A new blog?

While I could have simply responded on Facebook I thought it would be more appropriate as a blog post and the perfect time to separate my blog into one that focused on family and one that focused on birding. I will continue to post birding stories about the family on the other location, but hope to write my thoughts on this blog going forward. Blog post and Facebook response are different!

1. Threads on Facebook are extremely hard to find and get overwhelmed and buried with other threads. I expect that I will want to come back to my thoughts for future reference and see how they have changed. I posted a few years back about chasing. I find it interesting that I now regularly chase and that I did not foresee the a move to Kansas City changing how I bird so dramatically.
2. Any post that goes longer than a few sentences is not read even where long answers are expected on social media. By nature, blog posts are longer and almost everyone knows it. I don't pretend to know the reasoning for this observation, but at least this platform is designed to show the entire post. In addition this format allows for using paragraph formatting and indentations and wish that posts and responses were consistently at least at the middle school level.

Starting out as a bird watcher

My first memories of birds were with grandparents and parents. My grandparents had a large feeder setup in their backyard, my parents had a smaller one, and my father loved duck hunting. Growing up we would look at the birds out the kitchen windows while eating and playing cards. I hunted to be with dad, but in college I learned that hunting afforded me the opportunity to get out in nature. I soon got to the point where hunting success was not determined by bringing anything home, but rather the experience of being with nature. College and grad school slightly detoured my time in nature, but once our eldest (approx 11 years ago) was born it all changed.

My wife and I starting taking walks to get her to sleep. We had recently purchased a DSLR to take pictures of our daughter, but my wife also took photos of anything along the trails. Birds were a fun subject for her photos, as they seemingly changed more often than the flowers, trees, or sky. My spark bird was my wife's photo of a Song Sparrow, as this experience revealed that I nothing almost nothing about birds but was curious. I soon bought a handful of guides and attended a Madison Audubon Field-trip for the first time. With an extremely stressful @#$%y situation in grad school birds became a personal and family retreat from hypocrisy, politics, and human 2-sidedness that seemingly invaded many aspects of life.

I escaped self-imposed stress and personal insecurity with the frivolity of attempting to identify every species. I found being a new birder to be easy and carefree! I simply introduced myself to respect others, asked questions when they would be received, was appreciative of kindness, took care to try and recognize knowledge versus opinion of other bird watchers, and celebrated excitement regardless the reason. I had hopes of being able to identify all photos, but soon realized that it was more enjoyable to have a willingness to be wrong.

Over the next couple of years my wife or myself took photos of 200 species. Identifying birds in the field is a challenge and I was slow to learn this skill as I put in little time on the topic. Photos were easy for me and were weekend enjoyment away from school. I thanked others for pointing me in the right direction and would go look up information afterwards. While I loved the information and learning side of photos I soon realized that my photos and others were judged unwantingly. I saw the same hypocrisy of people saying one thing but thinking another, saying something different behind others backs, or acting and speaking in a way inconsistent with previous words. It is odd that I find the subject of the photos beautiful, the memories of the experience figuratively priceless, yet the photo is repulsive because of the human interactions and words of a few.

This Sandhill Crane family walked across a field on one of our first walks!

A transition from bird watching into birding

For work reasons I moved away from Madison three years after getting into bird watching. I struggled as an inexperienced birder having moved to a location with less people and almost no birders. I did not know where to go nor how to find many birds. I had to change tactics from following others to figuring things out for myself. I often considered myself a miserable failure for not see many birds, for not being able to identify them, and I foolishly compared myself to others. I occasionally gave up on birding endeavors even during spring migration.

At the same time something else happened. Within a month of moving I found myself at a local wildlife area and shortly thereafter started volunteering with them. I was reminded that my love for nature was fostered and returned to my personal beliefs on the educational component of bird watching! I did not devote enough time back then, nor now, to learn quickly. I accepted that I did not know as much about birds as I wanted to and got back to loving the journey of learning. So, I led nature and migration walks on campus. I completed bird surveys for the DNR and reached out to others in the area even though I did not consider myself anything more than a novice.

A fresh start as a newbie birder

For work and family reasons I moved again after 2 years in central Wisconsin. I loved seeing new species and common species, but the lifers were extra special. I joined another group and quickly volunteered with them. With the move to Minnesota something changed however, I fell into a couple of birding friends that expanded my view birding of convenience and beyond local patch birding. They were my personal introduction to the world of listing, big days, chasing, and big years. I like numbers for personal goals and because of my analytical nature. I like getting out to new areas and exploring even though my discomfort for being lost can be crippling. I like that competition with others forces me to consider my own methods and identify areas of personal deficiency. Even more importantly though, I felt the joy of birding with others and their friendship. I asked questions why they birded this way and part of me likes each of these reasons for birding because of them.

I was quite happy for a friend when his MN state list surpassed mine; a topic that I had not considered relevant or important before. We had met on campus when I sent an email based on an eBird report. Shortly there after we had went looking for a few rare local migrants together. I suspect that he might have skipped a class or two to do so and a friendship was formed. The state list is a fun topic of conversation between friends where I hold no animosity for lagging behind, yet know others that hold grudges and judge others based on the same numbers. He is an amazing wealth of knowledge and a genuinely great person; I love that he gets to share is passion with others regularly. State, life, or year list comparison between us would be for pure silly fun and good nature ribbing rather than any sort of ranking.

Moving as a birder and where I am today

Once again for work reasons I moved, this time to Kansas City. KC is an area where we have no family, had no friends, had almost no experience in the area, and where birds and birding was sufficiently different from MN and WI. Using all the past experiences I tried to reach out to KC, Kansas, and Missouri birders to learn from them on where to bird. My offer to volunteer locally fell on deaf ears and I ended up focusing my attention back on birding. Even though Kansas City has many green spaces, birding the areas often requires that I drive somewhere first. I suspect I drove more in 6 months to go birding around KC (I didn't go all that often even) than in the first 3 years of birding in Madison or 2 years in MN where I regularly when birding locally!

The identity I had in two previous locations was no longer easily available and I tried to find my niche in KC. I love birding and the beauty of nature, but also enjoy being part of something bigger than myself and being with others that share the same interests. The birding community seemed fairly small and surprisingly disjointed. There were distinct groups in the area and they seemingly didn't overlap all that well. The most active of these was a small FB group with a few active experienced birders on it but many were in the situation I found myself in just a couple years back. Expertise and knowledge was present in the KC area, but largely not on social media. There are so many positive aspects of social media and I am very grateful for the ability to connect with "friends" and share information quickly. I suspect unintended consequences of any group is the unwittingly classical conditioning that tends to have some individuals be identified as experts incorrectly and for personal image management savy individuals to be the focus of Brad Paisley's song.

So where does that leave the ardent reader that went through this entire post? The background information does little other than to explain my answer to the question "why do you I bird?"

1. My love of birds that is rooted in a love of nature with family memories.
2. I personally love that nature and bird watching reveal something new regularly.
3. I want to nurture a respect for nature in others and birds offer a great conduit for that goal.
4. My personal ability to meditate, find centering on creating and love, and hopefully avoid judging apparent hypocrisies of the world.
5. In as much as it is possible given the above answer, find friendship and spend time with others that accept me for the insecure quirk I am.

What's next

I have had the wonderful fortune of meeting many bird watchers, listers, and birders throughout the state of Kansas and country. I feel truly blessed to be part of a wonderful community and where I currently reside. My personal beliefs are often at odds with others regarding expertise and knowledge. Through many conversations I sense that many people want to be experts (perhaps more simply just listened to) but few are willing to be wrong enough to learn from their errors or listen to others. For that I am thankful for the few people that accept me as a relatively inexperienced birder with much to learn, as an individual with enough experiences to help some, and have the enough self-awareness to know the difference between knowledge and opinion.

So what's next? Perhaps I will birding alone or maybe I will with others. I will likely bird locally but may also chase a distant bird. I might take a photograph yet will often let memory go wild with creative formation and purely observe instead. What unfortunately has not changed over the years is that I will almost always avoid individuals that say one thing but do another; love and respect nature for any reason and perhaps we'll get some time to share outdoors together.