Why Howie is not a birder (complete with photos!)

 In which I infuse birding into my English class blog, just like I did in Nonfiction Writing.

One reason I had such a hard time tolerating The Mezzanine was that I kept having moments like when Howie reads the passage by Aurelius about the triviality and transience of human life and immediately declares the statement incorrect. I repeatedly disagreed with Howie/Baker on many of the issues he was trying to provide insight into. Why was I so opposed to so many of the opinions expressed in the novel?

Howie's insights just don't jive with my birding philosophy.

1. Small details
When you start birding, you think that identifying birds is all about noticing tiny little details in the field marks in order to differentiate species. This is partially true; this is the kind of thing that seems to fit in with the way Howie assesses the world. However, identifying birds based on detail is highly impractical. The more you bird, the more you recognize species not by their details, but by their overall impression. There's often no time to appreciate fine marks individually, or even a way to see said marks clearly. When a small, fast-moving bird bolts from a pond as you approach and heads straight into the sunset, there's no time (or viewing possibility) to consider things like:
"Eye ring, like an esteemed British gentleman with a monocle, or eye line, like the spectacles of a Princeton professor?"
"Texture of velvet and color of inexpensive fast-food chain chocolate shake, or wearing a tweed suit made of river-bottom silt?"
"Beak long and thin like needle-nose jeweler's pliers, or closer in appearance to a wedge doorstop?"
Instead, you have to judge the bird in a holistic way (like the college application process!) to determine whether it's a Spotted or Solitary Sandpiper.

You have two seconds to identify this pair of birds before they disappear behind the reeds. Hint: they aren't sandpipers. Sandpiper move too quickly, so I don't have any photos of them flying away.

2. Celebration of the man-made
Cities, manicured lawns, urban landscaping: just say no. The fact that something is aesthetically pleasing to the human eye typically means it is artificial and not aesthetically pleasing to the eye of a bird looking for some half-decent habitat.

3. Convenience
Howie loves convenience, and the ingenuity that must go into making things convenient. With birding, the less convenient it is, the more exciting the birds will be. For one thing, if a location is easily accessible and the habitat clearly visible, it is also highly disturbed and there will be fewer birds there. Large, isolated preserves are better. Secondly, finding a bird you've never seen before feels far more rewarding if you had to work to find it. I went to the Rio Grande Valley for spring break one year, and found a Green Jay eating from the birdfeeders at a nature center. It was a gorgeous bird, but I was so underwhelmed by how easily I had found it that I only took one photo, which later turned out to be blurry and badly lit.

Meh. (Click on photos to enlarge)

On the other hand, when I was visiting Massachusetts to look at colleges, I took the time to head out to a wind-battered, snow-covered, bare-rock cape where I walked around for an hour looking out at ducks and grebes (1) from a quarter mile away, and it was exciting.

Cold and wind and water add up to exciting birding.

After not finding much and reaching the time when we were supposed to turn around and head back to the car, I found one of the species I hoped to see there in the first place:

YESSSSSS!

 That photo was taken through a spotting scope looking down from the location pictured below:

Now that's birding.

Those Harlequin Ducks were nowhere near as close as the Green Jay, and the climate in Cape Gloucester in March were far less comfortable than those of Harlingen in March, but the sighting was so much better because I had worked to get it.

I ended up taking about 50 photos of the Harlequin Ducks.

4. The clean background trick delusionHowie thinks that isolating an object magically transforms it into something worth looking at. When nature is concerned, there are two names for putting an animal in a situation in which it is easily observed and contemplated: taxidermy and zoos.
If I had to pick one category of birds that I have trouble identifying, it would be dead. I spent some time looking through the bird collection at the Natural History Survey over the summer, and kept misidentifying the feathered carcasses in the climate-controlled, alcohol-stenched room. When a bird is preserved past its expiration date, it is no longer easily recognizable. The overall size is wrong, the proportions are wrong, there are no behavioral field marks with which to identify it; all you have are the fine details that I typically don't use when identifying birds in the wild (see reason 1). This is how some birds end up with names that initially seem nonsensical: Orange-crowned Warbler, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Those species were named by ornithologists who, because they were holding dead birds in their hands, could base their identification of the species on "field marks" that aren't reliable in the field.

These guys are ruby-crowned. You got a problem with that?

 Zoos, on the other hand, at least have birds that are alive and look like they ought to. However, because they're on display and tend to be easy to see, birds in zoos don't count. They're pretty. You get good views of them. They make great photo subjects:

Cute couple.

But in the end, they just aren't real enough. You know that the bird will be there (unless there's some cage-cleaning going on), and you know it's in a habitat that has been designed to provide a mixture of privacy and visibility. Birds in zoos can't go on your life list (2), and they're not as satisfying as those you see in the wild (see reason 3).

My main objection to the clean background trick, though, is that it goes against the first rule of nature photography: don't take a photo of an animal. Take a photo of an animal interacting with it's environment. If you isolate the bird from its surroundings, you may be able to examine the bird more closely, but it's not particularly exciting. As far as I'm concerned, birds (and objects) are more beautiful and interesting when they are doing what they are meant to do rather than preserved motionless against a serene background.

Okay... interesting, maybe, but it looks like clipart.

Better...

Best. Dinnertime!

My preference for seeing things in their natural surroundings also extends to aircraft. When I was little, I would go to air museums and obsess over the numerous planes on display. For a few years now, though, I've been attending the EAA Airventure air show and fly-in in Oshkosh, WI. At that event, the majority of the aircraft are in flying condition, and you can watch them in the air rather than parked in a hangar. Air museums just aren't interesting any more, because though they may have unique and rare vehicles, they aren't doing anything. A simple flyby is a huge improvement over stationary display for any plane.

Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatross with a clean background.

There's a bit of an improvement.

Different paint scheme, but these are still L-39s. I admit the blue sky is a sort of clean background, but the lighting and angles you get on the planes in flight are much more interesting than the one parked on the ground. When experiencing the flyby in real life, you also get the sound and movement to make it more impressive in the air.

Planes interacting with each other...

...and planes interacting with their environment. This would still be an interesting photo if it were just the two aircraft apparently flying straight at each other while inverted. But when you include the rest of the scene, it's two aircraft apparently flying straight at each other inverted... while only 20 freaking feat off the ground near a national guard base and cutting a pair of ribbons held up by people standing on the runway.

In the end, Howie was rather difficult for me to connect with not because of his writing style or meandering consciousness, but because he was usually talking about something I didn't care about (Late 80s corporate world) or expressing views I disagreed with. When I came across the passage regarding the Clean Background Trick, and Howie mentioned how it is used in museums, I did not think, "Hey, you're right, that's kinda cool." Instead I thought, "Hey, you're right, and I hate the way most things are displayed in museums." My constant opposition to Howie's way of viewing the world destroyed the only aspects of The Mezzanine that would have kept me reading: acknowledgement of the unique insights and amusement from the wacky writing. I wouldn't say I was offended by the book, but I was definitely having my Howie vs Aurelius moments:

"Wrong, wrong wrong! I thought. Destructive and unhelpful and misguided and completely untrue!" (120)

Maybe my anger would have been tempered if Howie had mused about pigeons for a while...



Footnote:
1. I love grebes! They're gorgeous, amusing to watch, and have some crazy adaptations for life in aquatic and coastal habitats (propeller feet, feathers that bend at right angles, etc). Plus, their babies are adorable.
2. A list of all bird species one has seen in the wild.

Answer to the identification challenge: Sandhill Cranes

All but two photos were taken by me. You can probably guess which two I wasn't behind the camera for.