Tag: Ed Yong

What a beautiful balloon I’m carrying with me.

Live & Learn26 Comments

So you were dealing with the feelings we talked about earlier, and you got to a point where you decided your life had to change. One of the things that then changed your life was birding. How did you find it? In the spring of 2023, just before I left The Atlantic, I moved to Oakland from D.C., and one thing that happened was I started paying attention to the birds around me. They were omnipresent in a way they weren’t before. On my first day in my new house, there was an Anna’s hummingbird in the garden. I would go for walks and hear birdsong: the melodious sound of a Pacific wren in a nearby redwood forest. I bought a pair of binoculars and would take it with me on neighborhood walks or hikes. I would have Merlin while I was working and look up occasionally and go: “Oh, that’s interesting. It’s an oak titmouse. I’ve never seen one before.” To me, the difference between being casually bird-curious and being an actual birder is making a specific effort to go and look at birds.

Going from passive to active. Exactly. So early September of 2023 was when I made my first trip to a local wetland to specifically look at birds and nothing else. That was, honestly, a life-changing moment.

Continue reading “What a beautiful balloon I’m carrying with me.” →

“What you do when you’re not working, not being productive…”

Live & Learn42 Comments

“…Birding has tripled the time I spend outdoors. It has pushed me to explore Oakland in ways I never would have: Amazing hot spots lurk within industrial areas, sewage treatment plants and random residential parks. It has proved more meditative than meditation. While birding, I seem impervious to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. My senses focus resolutely on the present, and the usual hubbub in my head becomes quiet. When I spot a species for the first time — a lifer — I course with adrenaline, while being utterly serene…

“When I step out my door in the morning, I take an aural census of the neighborhood, tuning in to the chatter of creatures that were always there and that I might previously have overlooked. The passing of the seasons feels more granular, marked by the arrival and disappearance of particular species instead of much slower changes in day length, temperature and greenery. I find myself noticing small shifts in the weather and small differences in habitat. I think about the tides…

Of course, having the time to bird is an immense privilege. As a freelancer, I have total control over my hours and my ability to get out in the field. “Are you a retiree?” a fellow birder recently asked me. “You’re birding like a retiree.” I laughed, but the comment spoke to the idea that things like birding are what you do when you’re not working, not being productive.

I reject that. These recent years have taught me that I’m less when I’m not actively looking after myself, that I have value to my world and my community beyond ceaseless production, and that pursuits like birding that foster joy, wonder and connection to place are not sidebars to a fulfilled life but their essence.

It’s easy to think of birding as an escape from reality. Instead, I see it as immersion in the true reality. I don’t need to know who the main characters are on social media and what everyone is saying about them, when I can instead spend an hour trying to find a rare sparrow. It’s very clear to me which of those two activities is the more ridiculous. It’s not the one with the sparrow.

— Ed Yong, from “When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place (NY Times, March 30, 2024)

Photo: DK @ Cove Island Park, March 31, 2024. Canada Geese at sunrise. More photos from that morning here.