~ Anne Kilgannon
“I used to keep lists, but not anymore,” she says, the tall, soft-voiced young woman who has fallen in with Thursday’s Children and now walks beside me toward the cypresses where warblers were seen this morning. “I guess I’m not a birder,” she says.
“A birdwatcher perhaps,” I suggest.
“Yes,” she says, “but more likely just a curious person who’ll stop for anything that catches her eye.”
We laugh….
Thursday’s Children is the name of the bird watching group of which Leonard Nathan seems to have been a longtime member. The old poem that names the qualities associated with each day of the week pegs Thursday’s Child as one “who works hard for a living,” but—although these are serious birders who will tromp through any rough field or climb any hill to see a bird—this is a most friendly and welcoming set of adepts. They would not describe their activities as “work” whether hard or not. More like a passion, a need, even a compulsion. Some do keep lists of birds seen but that is only one of the motivations that get them out climbing fences and navigating back roads. The “why” of all this effort is the subject Nathan examines for his readers, but he is really asking it of himself.
He describes how this question began to press on his mind: the group members were on a field trip up in Manitoba attempting to find a Yellow Rail, a bird he describes as “small and secretive.” Their bus takes them out “on a road through a vast marsh” where they wade out and form a circle and wait for the rail to appear…and wait…and wait, silent and unmoving (both for the sake of the bird and so as not to fall in the slough) as it gets dark and cold and the mosquitoes become active. In the dusky light they finally flush one, lose it, find it again, and “then, with no warning, up it flies, brushing the face of one of the group, and is gone. This time, though, we have seen it—or rather seen a yellowish brown blur in wild flight, more like a great moth than a bird.” He had to ask himself, just what was the nature of the experience? What was he doing out there in the cold and wet? What kind of quest was he on?
Nathan, a writer and poet, decides the best way to answer this question of why birds have such a powerful hold on our imaginations and even our dreams, is to turn to other poets who have written about birds, their mystery and allure, and seek wisdom in what he discovers there. As a foil to this wandering through the bookshelves, he also has challenging conversations with his close friend, a no-nonsense ornithologist, Lewis, who attempts to set him straight on the virtues of the scientific approach in contrast to the literary and romantic vaporizing wispiness of metaphors and allusions. Their rather flinty exchanges are as weighty as those between bird “listers” and mere bird watchers. Still, this is Nathan’s book and not Lewis’ so we know which side we are supposed to be on.
Nathan leads us, gently and persistently, on this field trip of his own devising, in and out of woods and fields, this poet and that, turning the question over and over to catch all its facets and hope for that illuminating beam of light. And we are pleased to come along. I confess his questioning is contagious. What kind of birder am I? Should I be keeping a proper list or am I more like the young woman who is simply curious about birds? Can I explain why watching birds makes me happy, as simple as that? And don’t I wish I had my own Thursday’s Children group to get me out there, straining with my binoculars to find some warbler and then enjoying a companionable trudge back across a field?
Nathan does find his answer, eventually. My own answer is the realization is that being in such company—even just reading about such a possibility—would be delightful and would certainly make me a better birder. Even if I am really just a bird watcher.
