A comforting tradition of evening bird walks with a colleague helped the creator grow to be more present not only in her own life, but in her parents’ lives as well.
July 1, 2024
Illustration by Cat Willet.
From the Summer 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now.
Anyone who birds knows it’s a pastime that brings people together into latest flocks of friendships. Just as people have their favorite birds, some people have their favorite birding partners. My favorite birding partner is my colleague Sarah, who’s roughly 13 years my senior and a professor of English literature at Fordham University in New York City. At first glance, we don’t seem to have much in common professionally beside the shared title of professor. Fate brought us together over a decade ago once we were office neighbors and each taught evening classes. We slowly began to chat during the quiet hours before our evening classes convened. Those chats turned to sharing snacks and fruit before our two-and-a-half-hour evening seminars. And that sharing changed into a deep friendship that in some way evolved beyond quick catch-ups over wine into long walks in Central Park to bird.
There’s a meme on social media about the moment you transition from going out to the clubs until 4 a.m. to birding at 7 a.m. It happens each steadily and , it seems. As with my relationship with Sarah, our gradual friendship has evolved right into a birding sisterhood that has led us to depend on each other intellectually and emotionally as we meander through life, in addition to through sprawling Central Park.
A Tufted Titmouse grabs a drink in the undergrowth of Central Park. Photo by Viviane De Luccia / Macaulay Library.
A male Northern Cardinal in Central Park. Photo by terence zahner / Macaulay Library.
When we initially began birding, we discussed the usual professor topics: university dramas, ever-evolving syllabi, frustrating and inspiring students, never-ending grading, and trying to make time for research. Birding helped us highlight the mundane and miraculous around us. Walking past the same trees for years can assist you to forget just how glorious they’re until you see a Blue Jay flitting between the branches. There is something about walking with binoculars around the neck that evokes a way of exploration, even when only a number of blocks from the office. For anyone who has gone birding with a friend, the feeling of being enveloped in conversation and then suddenly stopping in your tracks since you hear and then see a Pileated Woodpecker high above.
During my strolls with Sarah we frequently had two simultaneous conversations— about work and the Tufted Titmice in the bushes. Being in Central Park and pausing abruptly midsentence often attracts the attention of passersby and tourists who want to know what exactly we’re watching, standing shoulder to shoulder and now not speaking, just gazing into the branches of a tree for minutes on end. It’s such a thrill to introduce a random inquirer to the joys of birding—mentioning imaginary hands on a clock in order that they can see a Red-tailed Hawk staring back at them unbothered. To be a birder is to be a teacher, and possibly that’s the reason Sarah and I initially bonded.
During one among our strolls, when Sarah was particularly great at mentioning nuthatches and deciphering various kinds of geese, she shared that her father has been an avid birder and photographer for quite a while. Having lived in southern Illinois and now North Carolina, he has a plethora of birds to keep him busy. She is a second-generation birder of sorts. Just as people learn to love the sports teams of their fathers and pledge their lifelong allegiances, I wondered if people adopted the pastime of birding from a parent.
I spotted that I used to be introduced to birding while with my father, but in a rather different way. I discovered birding during the summer of 2020 in COVID lockdown, once I left my 800-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn and moved to my father’s spacious home in Dover, Delaware, for a number of months to ride out the worst of the pandemic (see Perspective: How Birds Helped Me Find Calm In 2020, Living Bird Winter 2021).
While there I discovered the joy and great thing about birding. I discovered the bird dramas, too—egg stealing, nest invasions, mating and dating woes. So many differing kinds of birds, and birds of prey. So many sounds from morning until night. I used to be immediately transfixed. When I ultimately moved back to New York City, my father called to give me updates on a few of the birds he now noticed due to our time spent together. The birds surrounding his home were now not headaches that clogged his gutters with their nests, but beautifully coloured flocks that provided him great enjoyment as he sat on his veranda in the evenings having fun with a cigar.
As Sarah and I proceed our walks, birding has grow to be a way for us to stay present. We should be keenly aware of our natural surroundings while we walk and talk and talk and talk, until we grow to be transfixed by a male cardinal hiding in plain sight. Our conversations have evolved over the years, and we’re developing a special sort of presence. One where when discussing our families and parents, we’re slowly understanding the urge to be more present not only in our own lives, but of their lives as well.
Hidden in the foliage of Central Park, New York City, a pair of Blue Jays feed their nestlings. Photo by John Drake / Macaulay Library.
My father is a septuagenarian and her father is an octogenarian, and we’re slowly realizing our time with them is precious and not promised. There is something somewhat frightening about realizing your parents usually are not going to be with you without end. I feel like I actually have a cocoon wrapped around me now, with my father still present—a certain mooring in a rough ocean that makes me feel tethered to something larger and stronger than myself, even in my fifth decade of life.
As Sarah and I bird, we frequently discuss our fathers and their different journeys. Maybe it’s because each men function the conduit to our relationship with birding, but in some way, a way, our fathers enter the chat every time we don our binoculars and head to the park. She tells me stories about her family, their various migration stories, and her father retiring from academia. I tell her stories of my family in the Deep South, our passion for international travel, and my father integrating his highschool in Miami. All of those conversations are had while we walk past sparrows taking dirt baths around our feet.
Birding has now grow to be a source of meditation. A way for me to be present with my thoughts, a way for me to be fully attentive to my friends, and a way for me to reflect on the journeys and generosity of my parents. As we enjoy nature’s abundance and the changing of the seasons, birding has grow to be a way for me to reflect alone abundance and life’s changes as well.