Simon Barnes, sportswriter for The Times of London, brings his wit and knowledge to the world of birds. Simply put, he says, “Look out the window. See a bird. Enjoy it. CONGRATULATIONS! You are now a bad birdwatcher.”
He traces his love affair with birds from his youth and a gift, “The Observer Book of Birds,” from his father. At this stage, and even after learning to use binoculars and field guides, he considers himself a “bad” birdwatcher. In fact, even after learning to identify birds by their sound and jizz (“the art of seeing a bird badly and still knowing what it is”), he still calls himself a bad birdwatcher.
As a sportswriter, Simon Barnes receives assignments to sporting events all over the world. The highlight of a Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., was visiting the garbage incinerator and seeing a pair of roseate spoonbills. A pleasure trip to Sri Lanka resulted in spotting avocets, long-legged wading birds with long bills. These birds, once thought to be nearly extinct, had made a comeback. While covering the Ryder Cup in Detroit, three ladies from the Audubon Bird Club took him at just the right time and to just the right place so that he watched migrating hawks stream by for two hours. These three ladies were, indeed, good birdwatchers.
The sportswriter/birdwatcher’s relationship with his father progresses from student to teacher. After purchasing a pair of lightweight binoculars for his father and a trip to the Lonsdale Road Reservoir, Barnes writes, “The combination was perfect; the reservoir and the binoculars combined to bring birdwatching into his life — not an occasional treat but as a matter of day-to-day living. And that, I think, is the principal aim of this book: to encourage everyone who picks it up to look, all the time everyday. Not obsessively scanning, just always aware. Everything else comes from looking. Birdwatching isn’t something you do; it is something you are.”
Each reader of “How to be a (BAD) Birdwatcher” will come away with a different experience. It may be suddenly to hear more birds in the morning or see a flash of red in the tree and decide that it is a male cardinal. Maybe it will be to appreciate the role of conservation and its effects on birds worldwide.
For me, it was a journey that made me realize that I was becoming a birdwatcher. My older sister was what Simon calls a “twitcher.” This is a birdwatcher with a life list of bird sightings and whose vacations are planned on the basis of where the birds are. Twitchers are twitching to add another bird to their lists.
From the very beginning of this book, I felt that I was missing something. The word, BAD, in parenthesis in the title and the continued use in the text made me uncomfortable. Is this the “bad” that really means “good”? No, that cannot be because in the latter part of the book, he refers to good birdwatchers.
Perhaps it is British humor that I just don’t understand. I finally chose drop BAD out of the title. “How to be a Birdwatcher” may not receive the same amount of attention, but it describes the contents of the book. Read it and see if you don’t agree.
Helen S. Munro is president of the North Carolina Bluebird Society. She makes her home in Foxfire Village.
