Just Look Up! I’ve been watching birds for close to 30 years. Yet the overwhelming sensation of physical excitement when I head outside with binoculars has never left me.
An orange oriole alights on a branch at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, on May 7, 2014. (Spencer Platt via Getty Images)
I discovered bird-watching when I was in my mid-30s, which as Philip Larkin said about the sexual revolution “was rather late for me.” You can take it up at any age, of course—start tomorrow if you haven’t already—but I envied the birders who seemed born knowing the difference between a Louisiana waterthrush and a northern waterthrush. I am bad at names and faces, and a slow learner of systematized knowledge. I thought I’d have an easier time with warblers if only I’d started my journey in neuroplastic youth, when foreign languages and sports statistics stick to the brain like pollen to the fuzzy part of a bee. Except that I never could learn a foreign language or remember sports statistics. I’m dyslexic, with a spotty working memory; talking about the Yankees at recess I sounded like a 10-year-old having senior moments. The wonderful thing about bird-watching is that none of that really matters. Which is all the more reason I wish I had taken it up sooner...
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