I suppose I have a fairly long history with birds — these lively, quick-bodied creatures.
Since childhood, whenever I came upon a sparrow by the roadside, I would have to stop and watch for a while, often wondering: what are they saying? And so, with a child’s imagination, I would supply a little dialogue for their calls.
I kept parrots too — cockatiels, budgerigars, and a pair of munias. In the end they all left, but their lives certainly left a deep impression on me, and for a long time they supplied the material for my compositions. You could say that my affinity with birds was the cradle of my writing.
It was in middle school that I first came to know of “birdwatching” — an activity that looks so utterly “for the elderly.”
After that, the world was no longer only sparrows and pigeons. The birds gained clearer shapes and a greater variety of expression. I could recognise spotted doves, magpies, azure-winged magpies, Eurasian blackbirds — all common species, yet for the first time I felt how rich birds are. I would often stand by the roadside, looking up at them chasing and squabbling, and my heart would go along with them. Such creatures carry a vitality of their own, adding a few variables to a repetitive, ordinary life and giving one a little more drive to keep walking on. Yes — vitality is contagious. Even without experiencing it yourself, merely watching a video or a photograph, you can feel the life spilling out of the screen.
So I gradually began trying to follow the birds’ traces: hearing a call, picking up a feather — all of it made me glad. At first I had little experience; I simply went to parks and places like that at random, hoping to find a few birds, and more often than not came back empty-handed — I knew almost nothing of their habits or where they kept. Still, it was my first step toward drawing close to nature.
Later on, I learned to read bird reports, checking ahead which species might appear. Of course, I do not insist on seeing every one of them: the pleasure of birdwatching lies precisely in its uncertainty — you never know how many birds you will meet, or in how many forms you will see a certain species: perhaps a subadult, perhaps a juvenile, perhaps an adult in different plumage. The most interesting part is watching their behaviour. Birds have a little society of their own: they quarrel, they show one another friendliness, they play with their companions; crows and gulls and the like will even play tricks on their fellows. Feeding, too, has its own methods — the Eurasian spoonbill sweeps its spatulate bill through the shallows for aquatic life, while the black-crowned night heron lines up along the water’s edge like a row of anglers, waiting only for a fish to “bite.” Watching and watching, you seem to see a society in miniature, and then suddenly you notice where nature’s wisdom lies.
Now, whenever I can spare a day or two of leisure, I go with friends to the nearest “birding spot.” A birding spot is simply somewhere sparsely peopled, with dense vegetation, water and abundant food — birds love to roost in such places. When there is no leisure, I still often stop and listen at a bird’s call, and my worries and pressures seem to drift away with the sound.
In my humble opinion, birdwatching is a discipline of the soul. When you put yourself in nature’s place, come into contact with it, and take joy in the things within it, that is a kind of ease that returns you to simplicity. It is no exaggeration to say that birdwatching brings one not merely a curiosity about something new, but the most honest communication, deep in the soul, with all things in nature.
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