Book Review: How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes

How To Be A (Bad) Birdwatcher. Simon Barnes. Pantheon Books. 2004, 2005. Available from Amazon.com.

I read this book in a single sitting, and enjoyed it so much that I've decided to break with tradition and put my enthusiastic endorsement at the beginning of my review rather than at the end. Whether you're a dedicated bird watcher or someone who merely looks up to see what birds are flitting past, you'll find this book charming. Get it today!

Think you don't know any birds? You do, ya know. In fact, author Simon Barnes points out "a list of birds that you can already recognize - even if you call yourself the most ignorant birdwatcher in the land: blue jay, Canadian goose, cardinal, duck, eagle, hummingbird, pigeon, robin, seagull, swan, and vulture! Each of these is instantly recognizable to even the most city-bound individual."

Barnes is, among many other things, the "well-loved and controversial columnist of Birds magazine". He's an excellent writer, witty, with an easy, light-hearted flowing style that brings you right along with him, with no jarring notes, and with at times laugh-out-loud humor.

"Perhaps you've already got a bird book. That is, a book that seriously tries to help you tell one bird from another. It's called a field guide. Probably because, in Britain at least, no person who fancies himself a good birdwatcher would be seen dead carrying one in the field. It's a snobbery thing; you are supposed to know most of the birds already....

Well, respect to all good birders who really do their birdwatching this way - and yah-boo sucks to all snobs who never carry a field guide and hope that someone else will clear up the mystery, while they don't give themselves away too badly."

"Yah-boo sucks?"

Barnes is an Englishman, so there are quite a few British-isms in the book, which the American publisher has seen fit not to Americanize (unlike the Harry Potter series, for example, where what Americans read is not what J.K. Rowling originally wrote, and rather destroys the flavor of the books). In the U.S., there's a bird we call a chickadee. In England, that bird is called a tit. (Short for titmouse). And Barnes makes quite a bit of humorous hay out of that particular bit of British/American English.

How to be a (Bad) Birdwatcher is not a field guide, but rather a memoir, an ode to the birds, as it were. While taking us through his childhood and his adult life, Barnes does explain the principles of bird watching - as well as why so many people love it and why bird watching can enhance anyone's existence.

"I wasn't looking for birds," he says, as he travels into London one day from a suburb, "but I am always looking at them, you see. Not for reasons of science, or in hopes of a fabulous rarity, or to make careful observations of seasonal behavior. Just because looking at birds is one of life's greatest pleasures. Looking at birds is a key: it opens doors, and if you choose to go through them you find you enjoy life more and understand life better."

"I don't go birdwatching," Barnes explains. "I am bird watching. Birdwatching is a state of being, not an activity. It doesn't depend on place, on equipment, on specific purpose, like, say, fishing. It is not a matter of organic train-spotting; it is about life and living."

Okay, so what is a 'bad' birdwatcher?

A 'bad' birdwatcher, quite simply, is simply someone who 'looks.' Someone who makes a habit of it.

Why do people like birdwatching, more so than "mammal watching" or "reptile watching? Barnes explains it in his inimitable way. What can one learn of the nature of birds by watching a bird feeder out of their back yard window? What's so special about binoculars to the birdwatcher?

How do you make sense out of a field guide? You must have one, of course, but it can be frustrating, with *all those birds in there. Which brings Barnes to the explanation of evolution - it's not a search for perfection, but a search for survival.

There's a popular notion, Barnes says, that all birdwatching, whether done by good or bad birdwatchers, is about rare birds. Barnes refutes this. What's rare in one place will be abundant in another. He explains the art of *jizz, how a birdwatcher will eventually be able to recognize a bird because of his familiarity with it over the course of many years (it "just is"). Are there birds you love to hate? Barnes will change your mind about them, too.

This is a memoir by a bad birdwatcher, to be sure, so Barnes gives us plenty of anecdotes on his childhood - the expeditions into nature with his father, his trips to the United States (in his professional role as a sportswriter), his introduction of friends to the hobby, as well as the lives of the birds that surround us, and will enrich your life if you only give them a chance. If we humans, as a species, allow them to live.

Table of Contents

1. Not just a nice hobby
2. Hamlet was a bad bird watcher
3. Birds are only human
4. My little chickadees
5. A present from my father
6. Teeming hordes
7. Falling in love again
8. Simon knows the name of things
9. Alice's key
10. Well done, medium or rare?
11. Shirtless Tim and a nice bit of posh
12. Oh, say can you see?
13. And all that jizz
14. Treasure houses
15. The right place
16. Bad birds
17. The right time
18. I spy with my little ear
19. Let them be left