July 4th, 2006
of birds and blogs
Later this week, Mike Bergin of 10,000 Birds will be hosting the first anniversary edition of the “I and the Bird” blog carnival. Previous contributors were asked to write a post on the subject of why you blog, why you bird, or why you blog about birds.
I’ve given these questions some thought over the past few days. What can I say?
I can’t really answer the “why you bird” part, as I’m not a birder in the popular sense. I don’t keep a life list and have never spent much time looking for a specific bird. If anything, the birds usually find me before I see them — whether it’s a Loon popping up like a cork beside my canoe, or a Barred Owl peering down from the sheltering branches of a Hemlock as I tramp by on snowshoes beneath. The birds and I seem to have a casual, comfortable relationship. We move through the landscape, occasionally encountering and observing each other for a few moments before continuing on our way. In fact, that very thought came to me yesterday as I realized that I was being escorted by two Common Yellowthroat warblers that chikked at me as they hopped from branch to branch along the woodland trail here at the farm. I stopped to reply as best I could with my own warbler chirps while they tilted their heads curiously — then I moved on and they returned to whatever warbler things they were doing before I wandered by. I don’t think of what I do as birding, but more like being “bird aware” as I pass through the landscape. For me, birds are part of the fabric of place, in much the same way that insects, mammals and vegetation are interwoven to form the whole. However, birds do stand a little apart from the rest as their movement and song breathes life into those places they inhabit. Think of any landscape without birdsong and that is often a scene of desolation, while those places filled with their voices are alive with all forms of life. It seems the bird is the arbiter elegantiae of the natural world.
Returning to the above questions, the why you blog is a little easier to answer. For several years, I’ve been recording my daily nature sightings through photography and rough field notes. This blog provides a venue through which to share some small part of my daily observations. Further, I’ve always believed that the more people know about the natural world, the more they will care about and attempt to protect it. Perhaps this blog is my own modest way of trying to increase awareness and encourage a sense of caring toward all flora and fauna, regardless of size or apparent significance. I try to take that approach with my own study of the natural world — by not restricting my interest to one group of plants, or creatures, or type of habitat. As alluded to above, I tend to think of place as a fabric in which all of the threads of life come together. To ignore or neglect one area of nature greatly weakens my understanding of that fabric. At a time in which the very fabric of all places – of the entire natural world – is under assault in so many quarters, it seems more important than ever to try to understand the complex role of every thread in each piece of fabric — birds, insects, reptiles, trees, fungi… Without that degree of understanding, how can we truly know how to preserve the integrity of the natural world?
This blog, small as it is, has become a thread in yet another fabric — that of the growing network of nature blogs that may be found on the web. Singularly, it may seem that each of us is writing about unrelated observations and occurrences. But when regarded as a whole, it becomes quite apparent that these blogs are recording valuable information in a way that was impossible even a couple of years ago. Thousands of pairs of eyes can now be watching the natural world, observing and often photographing what they see, and then reporting and archiving these images and observations into an immense and searchable database. This is an incredible time for naturalists as we find ways to communicate and share our observations of what is happening in our home ranges. It seems right to be a thread in that fabric.