My Fine-Feathered Friends

By Tom Poland

If you like to watch birds does that mean you are really old? I used to think so. Back when I worked at South Carolina Wildlife we staffers talked a bit disparagingly about birders, as birdwatchers are known. A stereotypical bird watcher, we said, had white hair, binoculars, a field guide, and tromped through the wilds wearing one of those pith helmets Marlin Perkins occasionally donned. We were in our thirties and birders to us seemed really old. You know, like in their sixties. Well, the ravages of time get us all, don’t they.

I’ll let you decide if watching birds means you’re approaching the end of the line, but I’ll say this: I get immense pleasure from watching birds. I like writing about them too. Photographing them too. I just ordered a Canon camera system, one that will help me to take professional-quality photographs of birds. Over the last five years, I’ve landscaped and designed my backyard, too, to offer birds the things they need: shelter, food, and water. The birds are cooperating. They fly in like jets at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Soon I will get some stellar shots of my fine-feathered friends.

Back to South Carolina Wildlife. One feature we ran regularly was Backyard Habitat. I recall that we gave awards to people with ideal backyard habitat for birds. Creating backyard habitat for birds was important then and it’s even more important today. I see no end to the human population’s explosion and as a result, housing developments, roads, shopping malls, schools, and airports continue to eat up forests and fields, i.e. bird habitat. Each year we convert about 2.1 million acres to residential use. That’s a lot of homes. Well, any new home worth its salt should have a backyard and even if it’s small, if it’s properly designed it can be a bird paradise and compensate for some of that lost habitat.

My back yard is big. It’s a veritable forest. I have six feeders of various designs to accommodate birds of different types, four birdbaths, and a fountain. (The sound of running water attracts birds.) I’ve planted 24 arborvitae and a huge Leyland cypress to offer places to roost at night. The dense branches provide concealment and safety. A grove of bamboo provides cover and lots of places to perch. It all comes together nicely and the birds keep me busy filling the feeders. My main headaches are relentless squirrels that will find a way to compromise any “squirrel-proof” feeder and neighborhood cats that hide in the bamboo and stalk birds. Now and then feathers tell me the cats have struck. Now and then, too, a Cooper’s hawk flies in to hunt. These small hawks prey on songbirds and have learned to hang around feeders for easy hunting, but hawks have to eat too.

Clockwise from top left: Unknown species; Ruby-throated hummingbird, female; Eastern bluebird; American goldfinch; Brown-headed nuthatch, a species dwindling in certain areas

All photos by Robert C. Clark

Bird watching is easy. Just sit on your patio or deck and watch. Bird watching is hard. Hike through the woods and trudge through wetlands and swamps. The choice is yours. Either way, getting close to nature is good for you. I’ve read that bird watching keeps the body and mind active and can help people with Alzheimer’s. The mental exercise of learning something new helps improve the health of the brain, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Identifying bird species and committing them to memory does good things for you. Fresh air and vitamin D from the sun aren’t bad either.

Birds do good things. They give us a window into the natural world, and over the millennia across all cultures birds have provided crucial ecological services such as keeping insect populations in check. Birds inspire art, mascot names (Atlanta Falcons), and they pop up in our language. I heard a lady say that she maintains her weight thusly: “I eat like a bird.” No ma’am you don’t. If you eat like a bird you never relax. Every other second a bird stops eating to do a 360 check to see if a threat like a cat or Cooper’s hawk is nearby. How would you like to eat like that? You don’t have to watch birds very long to realize that vigilance is the key to survival.

Birds come to my feeders all day long, though early morning and dusk are prime feeding times. There’s chirping, warbling, and singing, and woodpeckers drumming as Southern gray tree frogs bark from the birdbaths. It’s a musical performance like few others. And the scents of nature seem richest at dawn … flowers, honeysuckle, tea olives, and even grass fragrances sweeten the air. When the wind picks up the bamboo rustles and the pine tops coo. It’s like being in deep woods and in a way I am. Just across the highway from me is the largest forest inside a city limits in the eastern United States. Granted, I’m not in the country but I could do worse, like living in some big city’s concrete canyon.

I play a game when I watch birds. I walk out to the deck and count the species I can identify. I usually get up to ten or so in a span of two minutes. It’s common to see cardinals, a Carolina wren, brown thrashers, black cap chickadees, house finches, a nuthatch, a titmouse, a Baltimore oriole, Ruby throated hummingbirds, northern flickers, and blue jays. Rare but magnificent sights are the redheaded woodpecker, American goldfinch, and the eastern bluebird. Each time I step outside to watch the birds, I count anew.

I maintain that watching birds is therapeutic. It’s relaxing too. Plus they are such beautiful creatures. Look at the photos … a goldfinch, nuthatch, hummingbird, and blue bird. As for the other bird, can you identify it? Let me hear from you ornithologists.

Yes, I like birds and watching them beats TV any day of the year. As for getting old, maybe I have arrived at that point where being enthralled by birds qualifies me as “advanced in years.” Even so, how can you not be captivated by creatures that defy gravity? As for that old age thing, you and I both can take solace in the French definition of old age: anyone who’s fifteen years older than we are.