That’s a true statement for me right now. I’ve been going on a lot of solitary walks, trying to clear my mind. I’v“Birds as respite. Birds as refuge.”
That’s a true statement for me right now. I’ve been going on a lot of solitary walks, trying to clear my mind. I’ve always been slightly interested in birds. A mockingbird would sit every spring and summer on the peak of my house or one of the adjacent neighbors’ rooftops. I imagined this was the same bird each year and would always say hello upon his return. I’d laugh at his vocal antics. A robin would build a nest in the shrubbery by the front porch every year. I loved watching the little nestlings turn to fledglings and eventually take off. But now I’ve been really paying attention. I bring a pair of binoculars on my walks, just in case. I read about the Merlin app somewhere in a novel that had nothing to do with birding. I downloaded it because it sounded fun. Now I find myself opening it whenever I hear something unusual. It’s the perfect way to distract myself from everything else going on in the world and in my own life.
In any case, this book caught my interest and provided both entertainment and education. Author Trish O'Kane came to birding later in life. She was originally a peace activist and then an investigative human rights activist. A house sparrow and then a gray catbird got her hooked on birding. When I saw and heard my first catbird by actively trying to find one, I wanted to shout “There’s Trish’s gateway bird!” Of course, there wasn’t anyone around to actually hear me. It was fun to learn about her transition from one career to the next, although she found they weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
“The phrase ‘detective work’ is what hooked me. So birdwatching is like investigative journalism, I thought. You observe. You listen. You take good notes. You piece together clues.”
I’m not going to get into the details of this memoir, but I will say it was well-written and informative. I give Trish a lot of credit for the work she did in Nicaragua before she took on this new career. She also lost nearly everything to Hurricane Katrina before changing career paths and heading to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to obtain a Ph.D. in natural resources. She’s one strong and neat woman! Her activist efforts shifted to the natural world and involved parks and geese and birding and teaching both college and young people about these topics. I admire her work with the people of her community and the way she tied social justice work in with her nature activism. Here are three key lessons I took away from this that really made an impression on me:
“I’ve been particularly struck by the strategies birds use to fiercely defend their home territories. What if humans employed some of these same strategies to protect the places we love?”
“I remembered the counsel of my most important Jesuit mentor in Nicaragua: that if you want to make a difference in your community, you don’t do what you want to do – you do what the community needs you to do.”
“… I’d learned from catbirds that the idea of just doing nothing is bogus. We’re all managing wild animals by the way we live, by the landscapes we plant, and especially by the way we move around.”...more
Loading...
