'That was weird'

Sure, being into birds is strange.

Photo by Diane Helentjaris on Unsplash

I was at an event recently that shall go nameless. It was an interesting mix of birders and non-birders. Toward the end of the event, a guy started chatting on his way out the door. “That was weird,” he said to a stranger, an innocent birder. “What do you mean?” said the birder. “Just the way you all of you were talking about birds. It was all you talked about.” He had a sheepish grin, so maybe he realized what he was saying was a little too honest. To him, the fascination if not obsession of birding was off-putting. The birder replied cheerfully with a long list of reasons why birding is great.

The exchange didn’t come as a surprise to me. After more than one of my Piping Plover talks, someone has come up to me to avow “I still don’t like birds.”

The thing is, the same guy who judged birds is probably obsessed with, say, college football. Perhaps he is a fan of some school and goes to every tailgate and puts on face paint and spiked shoulder pads. Perhaps he and the wife are clad head-to-toe in team gear. Maybe he went to the school. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he brings a seating pad for the bleachers. He still does this when the team is crushing East-Central Michigan by 73 points.

We all live in various bubbles. To many, the football obsession is weird. So is quilting, golf, stamp collecting, Pokemon, and gardening.

It’s a reminder that birders are still in a bubble, even though we’ve nearly gone mainstream with celebrity birders and mentions in television series.¹ There are a lot of people out there who don’t give birds a passing thought.

Birding is one of the least-weird obsessions there is. What’s wrong with being outdoors in a meditative setting, minding one’s own business? The world would be better off with more birders. A whole universe opens up when one recognizes birds and gets a glimpse of their extraordinary lives.

This man’s view is a reminder to myself to be more open-minded. After all, all of us are trying to find joy in an increasingly uncertain world. What we do to pass the time is often the most fulfilling aspect of life. Even if it is kinda “weird.”

So laugh all you want, bucko. The birder lives life closer to nature and in tune with a world you’ll never have the benefit of experiencing. We live life on our own terms, without a concern to what’s considered “weird.”

1. In the HBO show “Task,” released last year, the main character, FBI agent Tom Brandis, played by Mark Ruffalo, is a birder. It’s a good show, but for the most part birding isn’t part of the plot. Not to give too much away, but Summer Tanager is one species that comes up in a lengthy digression by Brandis, who enjoys gardening and observing birds in his yard. The program gets ornithology very right, which is much appreciated and often rare.