Lifelong Pursuits: Defining a Birder by Mary Ann Sternberg

Life Long Pursuits: Defining a Birder

So, on this last morning, I rebelled. I refused to participate in binoculars, life lists, and competitive birding, deciding to spend the morning alone on my porch, reading and enjoying the breathtaking scenery on a rare bright blue day.

I was not alone, however. Although no one occupied the other old fashioned porch chair, I was sharing the space with an extended family — or a familial community — of barn swallows, a species much too common for advanced birders to notice. Seven of these chickadee-sized fluffs of kinetic energy chippered, fluffed, flitted, flew, dipped, pecked, and scratched close enough for me to touch, to feel like I needed to duck. Each one wore a slight variation of what I assumed to be standard barn swallow uniform: a pale rust underbelly and darker, rusty chin, separated by a thick collar or bib of darker feathers. Their backs, round heads, and the topside of their wings were midnight blue, gleaming in the sunshine like just-polished wood, and their beaks seemed especially tiny. Perhaps the single most attractive feature, however, was their split tail that fanned to two black and white points when they fly, then fold together when they settle on the porch rail. I couldn’t distinguish between males and females by their coloration, which our expert later confirmed was nearly imperceptible, nor by their behavior. This was a flock of equally hyper birds.

At times, they all flew away — darting forth on sensitive missions, destined errands — leaving our porch quiet and static. They would swoop above the river, flit and jerk as if whooshed by airstreams, then return to the porch with a graceful whir. The beginnings of a mud and straw nest was flat against the porch wall; it was a messy, half-hearted effort, but several of the swallows scritched and fluttered at each other anyway, either trying to claim it or perhaps to keep the other from settling onto it. Two of them even engaged in aerial combat, wrestling in a feathery flutter until they fell to the cement floor with a soft thud and flew apart, unhurt. Other swallows perched on the porch ledge or the rustic beams spanning the porch, watching the fight, preening, pecking and flitting, looking very much like a coffee clatch of friends planning a day out or a party.

Wordless and fascinated, I shared the porch with these frenetic birds for well over an hour, watching bare-eyed as they performed their dance of life before me. It was like being on the set of my own personal Discovery channel program. I would have watched all day. And I would surely have liked to ask them who was going to claim that scraggly, barely usable nest.

For their part, the barn swallows seemed totally disinterested in me, oblivious to my presence. Perhaps, because they were based in Concan, they may have learned enough about the parade of visitors there to have instinctively known that, although I might sit and watch them, I would never be called a real bird watcher.

And my friends, the serious birders, returned from the morning excursion triumphant so we all went home happy.

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