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A special thank you to Erin Flanagan for providing literally all but a small handful of the bird photos. You're an angel, and a fantastic bird photographer!
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It’s a long tradition in my family to sit on the porch and watch the birds. Some of my best memories of visiting my grandparents are hanging out in their garden watching the birds flock (ha) to their birdfeeder and having them tell me about their regulars. A clear memory I have of my grandfather before his passing is watching a huge hawk hunker down in low-hanging branches of a big tree on the outskirts of their backyard. I pointed it out to him and, after a “Go get Grandmom”, and some initial awed remarks, we all settled in a long stretched-out silence and watched the hawk perch just feet away from us on that overcast day. I don’t remember now if it was spring or fall, but the hawk had sat there for hours, and I watched her for nearly all of it, but when I came back from a brief trip to the kitchen she was gone.
Whenever I go home, I get a debriefing from my parents on how the birds that nest in the eaves of our porch are doing, “There’s babies now! They’re molting- they might move out soon....”, and how active the bird feeder has been, and the new seed they switched to, and which birds are together, and who hates the new seed, and on and on and on.
Having lived on my own for a while, I have noticed like my parents and grandparents I too am a bird fan. I have never considered myself a birder, I don’t have anything nearly as serious as a life list, but I find that there’s something really special in noticing the birds when I am out and about. It makes me feel connected me to a place and yanks me down into the present moment. When I notice a bird, I notice other things too—what the sky looks like, the wind blowing my clothes around, the solid ground under my feet. Identifying trees and plants makes me feel this too. It’s an instant perspective shift.
From left to right: Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon), Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris).
There's something in the ephemerality of spotting a bird, watching it go about its business, and then seeing it fly away. For a moment, our paths crossed, and now they diverge. Making note of that crossing is meaningful. I don’t know how or why, but it is. I see you, you saw me, and now we part. I am going to keep walking to the grocery store, and you are going to maybe find a few more snacks and soar high above the crowd and bustle of the street. Is it quiet up there?
During this semester at Highlands Biological Station, I have learned a lot about species identification. Birds have long brought my own family together, and they also brought me closer to the people in my cohort. We shared lots of cool bird milestones this semester: we saw red crossbills in the vanishing spruce-fir forests of Roan Mountain and buffleheads in the campus lake. I heard a screech owl for the first time ever just the other night because a friend pointed it out and I saw my first kingfishers and juncos here.
Prior to this semester, I had never thought to attempt to identify birds by the sounds they make. It seemed out of my wheelhouse and difficult to just jump into myself with no one to guide me, and overall was just not something I ever really considered. Many people in this cohort have taken specialized bird classes, and learning from them has really opened the bird world for me. Two apps they introduced me to that have been extremely enriching are Merlin and eBird (not sponsored!).
Merlin records bird calls in real-time and matches it up to the bird it’s most likely to be based off of your location and birds that have been spotted nearby before. It’s especially wonderful for people who are hard of hearing. My mom has lost her hearing to the point she can’t hear a lot of birds anymore. One time when we were at the park there was a particularly vocal group of birds. “Can you hear them?”, “No”, “How about now?” and when I played her a recording I took on my phone with Merlin of the birdsong, she could hear all of it. Technology can be a scary thing, but in this instance it is lovely and makes me extremely sentimental and misty-eyed.
eBird is like a bird journal. You can start a list of all the birds you see in a day and it tracks your movement and time of recording; it’s a bit creepy, but I really like the checklist aspect of it. I am a big big fan of journaling, and it’s fun to keep a list of the birds you’ve seen in a day and where you saw them and what they were up to. These apps can also help with identifying a bird from its physical appearance.
All this is to say, if you want to get into birds, don’t be intimidated or overwhelmed by starting from nothing! These apps have made birdwatching and identification for me easier, more fun, and more accessible- I hope they can be of some use to you!
Shoutout to birds for bringing me closer to family, friends, and making me more present for my life. You're a beautiful part of each day and I hope I never take you for granted.
-KW
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From left to right: A Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), a fleet of the cutest duckies ever (Family Anatidae), a hawk of some sort (I never claimed to be a pro), a Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus) courtesy of Erin, a Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) spotted at Hazel Creek (also courtesy of Erin), and a smaller fleet of ducks.
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