25 August 07
Introducing Bird by Bird
Approaching 700 birds seen in the ABA area (North America including Canada and Alaska, excluding Hawaii) has me at a crossroads. It’s expensive and environmentally irresponsible to gad about the country adding birds to my list. (I have neither unlimited time nor unlimited funds for this kind of activity, and at this point the price per bird goes way up.)
Some birders at this point in their list settle into county listing, or state listing (easier if you live in a small state). Others start photographing birds, building their list back up with a photo of each species they had previously seen. (Some keep on going, chasing 750 and even 775; I will never be one of them.)
Me, I’m going to start sketching. A bird a day. Bird by bird, like Annie Lamott says.
Sketching birds makes you look at the bird hard. If you look hard enough, it makes the bird part of your psyche. This takes your head to a different place, one that is unfettered by obligations. I’m not particularly good, but I hope to get better. You do it enough, it gets easier. You see more.
Today’s bird is a white-faced ibis, sketched at the Yolo Bypass. It was getting hot. There were birders around because a glossy ibis — an eastern vagrant — had been reported that morning. I found myself smiling that I was content to study the white-faced ibises rather than worry that I couldn’t see the glossy. This is my introduction to a new quest: not a new bird, each time, but a sketch. The bird in front of me, not the one that got away…
I hope to produce one of these for my new blog, Bird by Bird every day, though they won’t always be new birds. We are seeing a lot of the turkeys from our kitchen window, for example. But my efforts are now shifting away from chasing to recording…
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A good idea… listing only brings heartache (especially when you find out that Glossy Ibis and Long-tailed Jaeger show up in Yolo two days after you leave the US). Having said that, if I weren’t friends with a bunch of crazy listers, I wouldn’t have seen half the magical places I’ve been to over the last few years…
Excuse my ignorance, but why does the ABA define North America as ending at our border with Mexico and not at the Isthmus of Tehauntepec? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the folks down there speak a different language?
I mean, just think what a boon for Mexican tourism it would be if they changed their definition!
Richard — granted. I mean, how would I ever have gotten into the Brownsville dump if I weren’t a lister, and that’s a real eye opener and no mistake.
Dave — it has to do with the collision of continents. Mexico is a different biogeographical community. And I’m not sure it stops a lot of North American birders heading south to work on their Mexico list — it’s a huge fraction of the tourist industry in, say, Oaxaca.
Sorry for the absence of links to the new site, last night — I inadvertently deleted our entire blogroll and set about restoring it, to the neglect of minor details such as this. It should be fine, now.
I’m still in the chasing “phase” of birding but I do enjoy just sitting and watching almost any bird, so long as it is doing something more interesting than roosting. I learn a heck of a lot more that way too.
Good luck on Bird by Bird!
Corey, don’t knock roosting! Even in roosts crows can be fascinating to watch.
I have read Lamott’s Bird by Bird and continue to read her whenever I need to be inspired to write. She is real. Your sketches are lovely and your philosophy surrounding their creation is fascinating. It reminds me of writing, but instead to draw. Anyway thanks for the sketches and the insights.
Linda Quinn