What kind of birder am I, anyway?

I don't remember a time in my life when I was not interested in birds. I was blessed with having a father who also loved birds, and who encouraged my own curiosity about them. One of my earliest memories of learning about birds is of seeing an unfamiliar one in our back yard one day, showing it to my father, and having him help me find it in a bird book. I was probably about five or six at the time. My parents always put out feeders for the birds so I had long since learned to identify the Chickadees, Nuthatches, Blue Jays, and Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers that hung around the house, but what I saw this day seemed to me to be far more exotic than any of those familiar friends. Of course my father, Francis, knew exactly what it was--a Northern Flicker (though he would not have included the "Northern")--and patiently helped me locate it in one of the few bird books he owned.

This little lesson was important not just because I learned the name of the bird I was seeing, but also because of what it taught me about using books as sources of information. At the time--this would have been c. 1956-57--there were not many bird books in the house. I don't think we even had a copy of the Peterson guide at this point. The bird books that my dad did have were large and bulky. With green covers. The one I remember best was Edward Howe Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States, though my dad owned only Volume 3. (He told me once that that was all he could afford.) It was not the Forbush book we looked at to find the picture of the Flicker--that's in Volume 2--but another green-backed tome the name of which I no longer recall. I think it was The Book of Birds, by Gilbert Grosvenor and Alexander Wetmore, published by the National Geographic Society, but I'm not certain of this. [see update below]

In later years I would come to have a great appreciation for Forbush and his writing, especially for his monumental work on Massachusetts birds. Of which I am now the proud owner of a complete set. The magnificent paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes that grace this work are also a stunning achievement and another personal favorite in the realm of ornithological literature (broadly speaking). But these are all topics for other days, and other posts.

To get back to my father...he was a farmer who possessed a keen sense of observation and a deep appreciation of the natural world around him. Birds were, of course, a large and integral part of this world. The idea of “going birding”--making a special effort to travel some place just for the sake of seeing something different--would never have occurred to him. Nor would he have taken the time away from the farm to do so. Rather, he enjoyed watching and learning about the birds that he encountered as he went about the business of "farmering,” as he sometimes referred to the way he made his living.

I carried this birds-as-a-part-of-daily-life attitude with me as my own love for and interest in them evolved. There have been times in my life when I've pursued this interest more actively than others, but for the most part I've done so on the fringes of the organized birding community. I was an enthusiastic non-joiner of bird clubs until some musician friends in Tennessee, who are also birders, persuaded me to sign on to the local chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society. Participating in a few seasonal counts with those folks was very eye-opening in terms of a) realizing how much I didn’t know and b) how much I could learn from others who shared my passion.

Upon moving to Maine in 2010 I attended a couple of meetings of the local (York County) Audubon Society and soon found myself drafted to serve on the group's board, ultimately sitting as president. There are some extremely knowledgeable bird people in the area and I enjoyed having the chance to learn from them. I even led a few bird walks myself under the auspices of the group. The association with YCAS came to an abrupt and unhappy end in the Spring of 2013 when I found myself on the receiving end of a vitriolic diatribe launched by one of the long-time members of the board, in a case of what the folks in Hollywood and Nashville call "creative differences." Deciding that I would be happier without the aggravation of trying to lead an organization, I resigned my position and went back to birding at my own pace. And am much happier for it.

So, what kind of birder am I?  I’ve never been much of a lister, and do not enjoy the competitive aspects of birding. I do keep a life list but have no real idea how many species are on it. Somewhere in the vicinity of 300 species, I think. No so very many, I suppose, for someone who is on the north side of 60 and has been interested in birds all his life. I get as excited as anyone when I see something new, but I'm not one to drive hundreds of miles just for the sake of tallying one more species in my personal census.

When I was young and first learning about birds, people who maintained an interest in birds were known as "bird watchers," and the activity was known--sometimes derisively--as "bird-watching." Somewhere along the line, in the early 1970s, I think, as more and more people took up the activity and the nature of the hobby changed, it became known as "birding" and people who took part in it became "birders." This was more than a simple semantic shift, as the nature of the activity changed as well. The emphasis shifted from leisurely observation to tallying numbers of species seen, in something of an avian variation of trainspotting. Though I confess to sometimes getting caught up in the numbers game myself, I'm consciously making more of an effort these days to watch, to observe, to learn, and not just concern myself with ticking off species on a checklist. (And I don't do eBird, though I may, at some point, relent.)

I watch for birds constantly, and often unconsciously, whether at home or out and about. I keep at least mental tabs on the avian activity in our yard and get excited when new visitors join the Usual Suspects. (As I type I'm pleased to see that Juncos have re-appeared for the season.) I love working outside around my house because it affords more opportunities to see what birds are present and active. I make frequent forays to favorite birding spots in the area such as the East Point Sanctuary in Biddeford Pool, Wells Reserve at Laudholm, in Wells, Scarborough Marsh in Scarborough, and various properties owned by the Kennebunk Land Trust. Because I travel back and forth to the Boston area with some degree of regularity I often hit other good locations between there and southern Maine. The Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island, off Newburyport, Mass., is a favorite destination, as it is for many other birders. I will be writing about ventures to all of these locations in future posts.

I look forward to sharing some of what I see and learn about through this blog--though birds will by no means occupy all my thoughts and space here.

What kind of birder are you?
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Update, March 16, 2017: Yes, it was the Grosvenor/Nat'l Geographic book that my father owned; I have since obtained my own copy. The flicker--called "Yellow-shafted Flicker" in those days (1939)--was painted by Allan Brooks, a fine, Canadian-born painter who completed the plates for Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts after the principal artist, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, was killed in an automobile accident. The image of the Brooks painting of a Flicker is forever etched in my memory: