Of a Feather A Brief History of American Birding by Scott Weidensaul
Harcourt, 368 pp., $25
Scott Weidensaul claims that birding is now mainstream in America. When I read that I wondered which one of us had been drinking. Birding mainstream? You've got to be kidding.
But then I got to reflecting about my own experience. In the 1970s, within a year of when I started birding, I knew almost everyone in the eastern Massachusetts birding scene by sight and name (I had a lot better memory then). Of course, as a beginning birder, I traveled more and introduced myself to more people and asked more questions. Still, there were really only about 50 or 100 active birders in the eastern part of the state. Nowadays, I have absolutely no idea of the total numbers, but just the list of subscribers to massbird, the local birding listserve, must exceed 500. I simply don't know most of the people I meet when I go out birding. Those obscure spots along the Boston shore which were just mine to bird now have their dozens of young and eager observers, who know their birds and who also, and often, get stunning photos of the birds they see.
Still--birding mainstream? Weidensaul starts with an anecdote-rich series of chapters on early American naturalists and ornithologists. A delightful vignette involves the Hopi observation that certain nightjars sleep through the winter in a "deathlike trance." This idea was pooh-poohed by ornithologists for many years, but then hibernating Common Poorwills were discovered by modern ornithologists in the 1940s. Says Weidensaul: "Sadly, I don't know the Hopi . . . for 'We told you so.'"
Many more stories follow: of John White and John Lawson exploring the wilderness of the Carolinas; of Mark Catesby, who traveled throughout the southeast shooting and painting birds and writing about the new wildlife he was finding in America for his public back in England. That was the early 18th century. By the middle of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, new explorers such as John Bartram and Lewis and Clark of expedition fame were opening the central and western parts of North America to natural history and ornithological exploration.
Then come the big names: Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon who, improbably, met in a store in Louisville and parted amid mutual disdain and jealousy. Wilson was peddling his paintings of American birds and Audubon was just beginning to plan his collection of American bird paintings. Weidensaul's telling of the Audubon/Wilson meeting is mysteriously spread out over two chapters, with a beginning that sets you up for a twist ending. Indeed, the kaleidoscopic stories of criss-crossing personalities and bird information, politics and human relations, keep things racing along. Weidensaul's such a good storyteller that he sometimes loses track of one story and then starts another one, but eventually the stories resolve and we are on our way to the modern era.
The role of women in early American ornithology has been sparsely documented. But toward the end of the 19th century, powerful and influential women began to put their stamp on the world of natural history studies: Martha Maxwell, Florence Merriam Bailey, Harriet Lawrence Hemenway, Minna B. Hall, Cordelia Stanwood, Mabel Osgood Wright--all overcame the structural sexism of the age and collected birds, or wrote about them, or in the case of Hemenway and Hall, started the movement to ban bird feathers in women's fashions, which led to the modern conservation movement.
All these tales are inspiring, and fun to read, whether you're a birder or not. Weidensaul does not make it clear, but I want to make it very clear: Birders are really different. What they read, what they think, how they see things, how they plan vacations, their vocabulary, the angle of their necks, the tilt of their heads, the roving eyes--let's not pretend that birders are just like other people but with a "burning interest" in birds or any other such nonsense. Call it compulsion, or masochism, or inspiration--what else can explain why birders get up at ungodly hours and trek to smelly places such as sewage lagoons to look for small brown jobs picking along the edges of said lagoon; or tromp through bug-infested swamps listening for the sibilant voices of warblers so high up in trees that they don't even try to see them?
This is not "ordinary" behavior, and Weidensaul is part of the fraternity that thinks such behavior is normal. Yet for three-quarters of his book, he stays with the normal crowd who go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up at a reasonable hour and whose idea of a day at the beach is sitting under an umbrella with a good book rather than tromping around the mudflat looking at little blobs of sandpipers trying to see which one might be the Siberian.
Then, for the final quarter, Weidensaul returns to his roots. After all, he is a native of Pennsylvania and he is a birder. He knows the birding world. He knows the people I know--or at least I want to know. He goes birding with David Sibley and hobnobs with Rich Stallcup and Pete Dunne. He discusses the origins of field guides and describes the weaknesses and strengths of the various types in detail. If you want to get into birding, this is a great introduction; but for the general reader, this latter chunk can be hard going, what with the lack of juicy anecdotes and semihistorical legends. Yet Weidensaul has targeted a larger issue, and that becomes his focus toward the end. He wants to preach "beyond the list."
If you're a birder, you keep a list. Actually, you keep multiple lists: your life list (all the birds species you've ever seen), your year list, your feeder or yard list; city, county, state, country, and world lists; one-day Big Day lists and Big Sit lists. Weidensaul even knows someone who kept a list of birds she saw while copulating. Weidensaul then explains that one turn in birding not taken in the 1940s was suggested by Joseph Hickey, who wrote A Guide To Bird Watching. Hickey had a load of suggestions about what birders could do with their time other than chase and list rare birds. He suggested field studies and behavior studies and statistical studies of common birds, and though he inspired many people, the story of modern birding (so far) has been one that is diametrically opposed to the Hickey credo. Most birders "collect" birds, in the sense that identification and ticking off on the list is all there is to birding--all while bird habitat, and natural unspoiled habitat of all sorts, is disappearing at a faster and faster rate.
In language that ranges from subtle, understated, and somber to peevish and impatient, Weidensaul bears witness to his own conversion from "ticker," "twitcher," or lister to bird-watcher to naturalist. He describes the work that he and a group of volunteers do in the Pennsylvania woods in late fall, mist-netting and banding Saw-whet owls, an effort that has taught us a great deal about this extremely common, poorly known, and little-studied raptor; and an effort that is used to draw schoolchildren who, once they see an owl barely larger than a dinner glass, are likely to become hooked on birds.
Scott Weidensaul wants to be the prophet who brings new people into the orbit of birds, as well as the Jeremiah who warns birders about the folly of their heedless pursuit of the record and the list. His manner is engaging and his pedigree in the birding world couldn't be higher. Now, if I can only get my birding friends to read this to the end.
Soheil Zendeh is a birder in Massachusetts.