by As city dwellers head for their summer holiday in the country or on the coast, their focus might be drawn to a splash of color from a king parrot in the bush or a lone piper on a deserted beach.
For the most part, it is idle curiosity or respect for nature that draws their attention.
But for some of us, birdwatching is serious business.
To an onlooker, birdwatching appears to be a very niche hobby. Look at a bird, then tick off your list – it’s a narrow formula. In practice, however, birdwatching requires broadening of perceptions.
To fully understand birds and their behavior, you need to pay attention to other aspects of their environment.
Related: In search of the yellow daffodil – the only Australian bird that has never been photographed
Birds’ livelihoods are shaped by resources, such as food, water and shelter. Other animals, plants and fungi that share the same habitat also affect these resources. The ecosystem, in turn, is shaped by global patterns of weather, temperature, geological features and human influence.
Birds are initially targeted because they act as diplomats for the rest of the environment – they are highly mobile (and therefore widespread), noisy (singing or screeching), and often beautiful.
Birds are the swans that pique our curiosity – and when they’re curious, it’s hard to ignore the animals, plants, waterways and weather patterns that support these creatures. Bird watching is truly the gateway drug to such environmental awareness, which is why I am so passionate about it.
Bird watching teaches us to value birds, which forces us to value their host environment. For example, the song of a great lyre bird reflects the sounds of its habitat. These birds also improve biodiversity by turning over tons of leaf litter each year in search of invertebrates. These birds are ecosystem engineers, subject to and, in turn, contributing to the pressures of their habitat. This push-pull interaction is a phenomenon we can understand in many bird species, including seed-dispersing mistletoe and cassava, insect-repelling pardalotes and pollinating honey-eaters.
When we look at a bird, we are really looking at the sum of many ecological processes. A single bird can encompass the complexity of an entire ecosystem. That’s where the broadening of the senses comes in – it’s deeper than ticking species off a list. It is visible what processes allowed that bird to be here, now, enduring, against many options.
A big part of the power of birdwatching is being able to name species. Simply put, if we can identify species and where they live, we can effectively support their protection. In Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane says “once [natural phenomena and entities] go anonymous, they go to some extent unseen. Attention deficit resulting from language deficit.” Outside of the few iconic species known to most people – magpies, kookaburras and cockatoos – species names have largely slipped from everyday use. In a world where a lot of information resides online, species names are a key that enables us to teach ourselves about what we have seen outside. Engaging with your environment – whether birdwatching, or in other ways – can reverse this cultural language slide. If you recognize a species, you can describe that experience and share it with your family, your neighbors, your community, and build a common knowledge of the animals that share the environment.
If a parkland, a waterway or a stretch of nature is to be swallowed up by urban sprawl, we need local people who know which roadsides have rare orchids, which nest hollows in trees, where a satin bowerbird building a browser in the mode. In this way, we stop looking at the natural world from the “outside” but step into the landscape as supporters and participants.
My final reason is that we should all become bird watchers: you feel good when you notice birds. On a day when I’m feeling grumpy, it helps to change things around a succession of white-browed scrubwrens frolic in the birdbath. Taking a break to appreciate beauty helps us change our perspective. A lively king parrot visiting your verandah, a flight of rhinoceros hovering at the grevillea you planted, or a high view, the silhouette of a wedge-tailed eagle above the suburbs, it is a very special moment to enjoy, however fleeting. It is important to actively appreciate these simple pleasures, not to let them pass unnoticed. These are the moments that birdwatching emphasizes – moments that give perspective, that remind us that we are a small part of a large ecological process.
For many birdwatchers who took up the hobby as adults, life before becoming a birdwatcher, and life after, are strongly reflected. I think this is because bird watching changes the way you look at the world. It is normal to focus your attention on your surroundings. That’s the joy of this hobby. It is paradoxically fixated on detail but also expansive. He respects birds as representatives of ecosystems and global processes. It enables individuals to care for their immediate environment, and it also helps us engage with the public about the communal spaces we all use. It helps us name and make tangible the species we see – and those we no longer see. And finally, bird watching allows us to gain perspective on the challenge.
It’s a hobby that dwells on the joy of being alive, now, and sharing this window in time with an amazing variety of fellow species.
• Georgia Angus is an illustrator and author of Birds with Personality; 100 Australian Butterflies; Bees, Beetles & Bugs; and 100 Australian Birds, all published by Hardie Grant
