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The Curious Pleasures of Amateur Bird Watching
The sounds. It’s all sounds when you begin. Once you make the decision to start looking for birds, it’s your ears that actually tune in first. Everywhere you go, the air seems to drip with honeyed trills and cascading warbles. It’s overwhelming, once you start to really listen. You’ll feel invigorated, alert and connected to the environments through which you move in a new and exciting way, but this will be tempered by pangs of melancholy that come with the realization that this sonorous world has been gently draped around you for your entire life, and you’ve been sleepwalking for so long.
After a while you hear them all the time. Sometimes birdcalls will be your first conscious thought when you wake in the morning. You’ll strain to differentiate between tones and cadence, but likely won’t be able to distinguish them in any meaningful way, won’t be able to tell a warning cry from a mating call from a territorial beacon. That’s ok. The songs will fill up some small, hungry part of you, if you’ll only learn to listen.
From time to time, as you flip through your guidebook, you think about the ornithologists who phonetically transcribe bird calls for amateurs like yourself. These transcriptions strike you as genius in their childlike simplicity and earnestness. Per-chick-o-ree says the Goldfinch. The Pine Grosbeak goes tee-tee-tew. You turn…
