December 23, 2020
Birdwatching
Claire asks if I have any sunscreen. We have driven two and half hours in traffic on a Saturday morning in order to spend the day - I have only agreed to drive up on the condition that I don’t have to spend the night - at her friends Todd and Jenna’s cottage in the Kawarthas. We have stopped twice. Once to buy blueberry pie and once to buy corn. The pie place had corn but it was not, Claire made clear, the kind of corn we wanted. Then I had to pee and suggested we stop one more time at the gas station but Claire said the cottage is only fifteen minutes away. And it would have been, had Todd given us decent directions. Instead we take a route which lands us on their circular driveway 45 minutes later.
Which is only to say that when Claire asks if I have sunscreen I am in a bit of a state and answer without thinking it through. So I say “There’s a tube of Coppertone SPF 30 in my golf bag.” And there is. A brand-new tube. Right in the outside pouch where I keep my golf gloves. It is also, I realize a few seconds too late, where I keep my binoculars. Which Claire now has in her hands.
“What is this??
It is a pair of Zeis Conquest HD binoculars which I have recently upgraded to.
I look her straight in the eye and say “I have been spying on this couple copulating on the 1st floor of the building across from our condo.”
But that was a lie.
And Claire knows that was a lie.
I have been bird watching.
Ordinarily, I would wave off complaints about my various peccadillos, neuroses, obsessions, and phobias by saying she knew exactly what she was getting into. Which didn’t really ever make her any less mad or frustrated but at least it gave me a slightly elevated perch, even if it were as precarious as Hillary’s Step, nearer to the moral high ground.
But this time I do not have much of a leg to stand on. This is not what she signed up for.
It had started with the stamp collecting. She was not crazy about the stamp collecting. Especially since I had taken it up two months after we started dating. She didn’t like the sight of torn off envelopes soaking in my orange popcorn bowl in the middle of the dining room table. She didn’t like my stamp albums strewn all over the couch. She didn’t like my silver tweezers. She didn’t like my magnifying glass. She didn’t like having to wait an extra twenty minutes to start a show we were binging because I had my nose buried in a catalogue of Olympic stamps from Cambodia. But she especially didn’t like dating a guy who collected stamps.
“His father collected stamps,” she would say apologetically when I hauled out my tall ship themed stamp albums for guests to peruse with their coffee and crème brûlée after dinner. It wasn’t a hobby. It was a genetic defect.
I couldn’t really blame her. Nobody collected stamps any more. It was something you did when you were ten. Not a hobby you picked up at sixty. She didn’t know what to make of it. I mean, I guessed if I was otherwise normal it might be ok. But, as I am often reminded by friends and family, I am not.
I liked collecting stamps. I liked the history. I liked the geography. I liked the designs. I found it relaxing and even, dare I say, interesting.
Then I started up with coins. Nothing crazy. Just a couple of antique Roman and Greek coins. Some cool Canadian silver dollars. Ok, maybe the occasional gold commemorative. But really, nothing big. A handful of coins. Not even a collection. Unlike the stamps, I could keep them in my pocket. I liked to reach in and jingle them. Sometimes I jangled them. I paid a pretty penny for a 70AD antique Hebrew coin which was minted to fund the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans. From 70AD!!
I mean how cool is that!
Claire liked the coins even less than the stamps. Not only was it nerdy. It was, what was the word she used… smarmy.
“Smarmy? Are you sure you even know what that means?” I argued. “Maybe it isn’t smarmy,” she relented. “It just feels, you know, unsavory.” It felt so old. So uncool. But despite her protestations - when we left the house she would say “No stamps no coins” - she remained a good sport about it. In fact, she even bought me a set of Ottoman Empire circa 1800 coins for my birthday. Claire was a good egg. But, to her, it kind of felt like a bait and switch. She had already agreed to golf and poker. She had initialed the contract. She wanted to be in a relationship which didn’t keep adding addendums.
But we sorted it out. We compromised. We settled it. I liked her. I liked her more than I am letting on. I knew I was lucky to have her.
Then came the birds.
Here’s the thing. The internet has taken a little mystique out of collecting stamps and coins. Because everything is available. You aren’t really collecting. You are acquiring. Your collection can be as big as your bank account allows. There doesn’t seem to be any sport or skill to it.
But you can’t really buy birds. Sure, you could get on a plane and travel to an exotic locale. You could be part of a listserv which alerts you to a sighting. But you can’t add a bird to a shopping cart. You can’t build your life list by going to Amazon. Unless it is the actual Amazon. You have to go out and see it. Birders call it ‘getting’ a bird. Also, the entire hobby is based on the honor system. Birders are just as likely to boast about birds they had missed as they were about birds they had ‘gotten’.
I knew birding would put her over the top. She had joked about it when disparaging my other hobbies. “At least it isn’t birdwatching,” she had sighed to Jenna one night. Camels and their backs would require a team of spine surgeons.
Claire was not alone in warning me to stay away. When I mentioned my interest in front of my family, my niece Danna, shook her head and said “That’s a hard no, Uncle Ronnie. I just don’t think you can afford to get any weirder. You really have no margin for error.”
“I think it could be fun,” I replied, unconvinced.
“It won’t be fun for us. You are going to start posting blurry pictures of birds in our group chat. Then you will get pissed off if we don’t like them. Can’t you just collect stamps with pictures of birds on them?”
I didn’t tell her I already had a full album of bird themed stamps. It wasn’t doing it for me.
Allie was no more supportive.
“Claire will not be happy,” she said. Allie was not a huge Claire fan but still thought it was unwise.
“Can you birdwatch ironically?” She joked. I didn’t think so. Anyway, I was sure to hate it. I didn’t like early mornings. I didn’t like periods standing outside. I didn’t like rain. I wasn’t that crazy about nature. I didn’t really even like people. I wasn’t sure I even liked birds. I still list Hitchcock’s avian oeuvre as the scariest movie I have ever seen. On the other hand, as a Florida winter migrator myself, it was hard not to marvel at the majesty of the egret, the aerodynamically defiant swoop of the red hawk, and the surreal otherworldliness of an actual pink flamingo. In general, I liked reading about things much more than doing them. Why start an argument which would be moot in a week? I was just going to dip my toe and then go back to my life.
So I found a local group and sent an email to the coordinator, Tammy Levitan Shore, and asked if they would allow a newbie to tag along. Sure, she said. The more the merrier. Sunday morning. 7am. Was there a later minyan I asked? 7:10 was allowed but you had better come with a tray full of Tim Horton’s. 7:00am was uncivilized. But I would go once and then be done with it. I just wanted to see if it was going to be as bad as I thought. I called Lewberg and told him to cover for me. I was going to tell Claire I was golfing if she asked.
“Please tell me you are getting some action on the side,” said Lewberg.
“I’m going birdwatching,” I said.
“Please tell me that is a euphemism for getting some action on the side.”
“I’m going birdwatching,” I repeated.
“It’s not easy being your friend,” said Lewberg. Then he hung up.
I got to the parking lot of Earl Bales park at 6:45 with two dozen chocolate glazed donuts.
It was not, technically speaking, the first time I had gone bird watching - I had accompanied my friends Jeff and Orly a couple of times on short jaunts on the boardwalk which ran through a wetland preservation park not far from my home in Boca. But I had gone mostly for the walk, the company, and the chance of seeing an alligator. Jeff, a birder by marriage, impressed me with his identification prowess. From time to time, Orly, a remarkably talented amateur photographer, would send me pictures she had taken. Once, she had sent me a picture of the Bugs Bunny themed yellow-bellied sapsucker. But this would be the first time I had gone with the express purpose of looking at birds.
The members of the North York Easy Birding Society shuffled in minutes later. I had calculated perfectly. Twelve of us set off at exactly 7:00 am. Two donuts per person. Not a single person arrived late.
It was a Hollywood version of a motley crew.
I was, at 61, the youngest person.
I was the only one without binoculars.
I was the only one not wearing a bird-themed shirt or hat.
I was the only person who was not really, really cheerful.
I was, it became apparent after we crested the first hill, in the worse shape.
The other thing which became clear within the first hour is that my eyes did not appear to work. The childhood ditty taunted me. I had brought my specs but my eyes were still dim and I could not see.
Tammy Levitan Shore, a retired civil litigation lawyer, took it upon herself to walk by my side, loan me her back up pair of binoculars, and point out examples of some of the 300 different types of bird species native to Toronto which graced our presence that morning. The only thing was, I couldn’t see any birds. There were trees, there were branches, there were leaves. There was a good bit of rustling. Also, bird-like noises, I guess you could say IRL tweets, which all sounded identical to me. But no sightings.
Tammy Levitan Shore, on the other hand, could not stop seeing birds.
A Cardinal
A Downy woodpecker
A Song sparrow
A Nuthatch
A Black capped chickadee
Bless her heart, every sighting was if it were her first.
She would nudge me gently and point at a branch. I would then bring the binocular to my face and try, in vain, to find it.
Oh yes, I said. I see it.
Birdwatching is based on the honor system. I had been out there for less than twenty minutes and was already lying through my teeth. I had also quickly developed a crick in my neck. I didn’t mind the walk. I didn’t mind being out here in the woods. But at least now I knew this is not for me. I spent the next two hours pleasantly nodding my head and making small talk about things I knew nothing about.
And then I saw the owl.
I saw it because I had to pee. We had been out here for a couple of hours and I hadn’t seen any of the other men - we were divided equally - sidle up to a tree to relieve themselves. I didn’t know what the protocol was. I didn’t know if the forest was considered sacred ground which I should not desecrate. But I had to pee. So I separated myself from the rest and zig zagged through the path in order to find a private spot. I was zipping up when I saw the owl. I was five feet away. At ten feet, I wouldn’t have noticed it. Later, I learned it was a barred owl. It was a good get. I surreptitiously snapped a picture but the owl couldn’t give a shit. It wasn’t moving. Then it did that thing I had seen on TV where it rotates its neck like a spring action toy. I would have stared a little while longer but I heard someone call my name so I sprinted back.
The thing about birders is they are very generous. They get a bird and they want you to get it too. The book, The Big Year, which was later made into a so-so movie with Jack Black, is about a cut-throat competition to amass the most sightings in one year. But that wasn’t my experience. My experience was that birders are great sharers. But I didn’t share my barred owl. I kept that one for myself. In the next few months I got a few more birds on my own. My eyes got a little better and the binoculars began to make a difference once I knew what I was looking for. I didn’t really get totally into it but I liked to dabble.
Claire adopted a don’t ask don’t tell policy. I no longer tell her I am golfing and she doesn’t ask where I am going. I walk outside and become a bit more aware of my surroundings. The birds, it goes without saying, have been there all along. Of course, it takes me three days to notice Claire has cut her hair. But that’s another story.
Todd and Jenna are excited to see us. They have a list of possible activities. Do we want to go on a boat ride, a swim, a hike, or just veg on the dock first? Claire thinks a hike followed by a swim. It sounds good to me. Jenna says they have found an amazing hike. She says she will get snacks and water bottles. I go in and find a bathroom. When I come back they are ready to go.
Claire smiles at me and says “Go on. Go get them.”
I hesitate.
Then she turns to Todd and Jenn and says “This one has turned into a birdwatcher. He has binoculars in the car.”
I don’t correct her and say that the approved nomenclature is birder. Her mentioning it at all is a huge step.
I walk backwards to the car and retrieve the binoculars, wondering if this is just a prank.
But no. It really is a thing.
Jenna says. “Birdwatching eh. I love that for you.”
Todd says “Dude, you are in for a treat. A lot of great birds on this hike.”
He is right. On the way back I snap off five or six pictures of a great blue heron. It is a beauty.
I post the best shot on our family group chat.
I get no likes.
About five hours later Danna posts “Nice. Get a life Uncle Ronnie.”
But I already have.
The end.