By Shloimy Lowy, Photographer and Staff Writer
I got into birding by accident. It was June 2023, and I was at the B&H Photo Bild expo. Having recently gotten my first proper camera, I wanted to get better at street photography. At the event, I joined a photo walk and went out near Hudson Yards to capture the city spirit. While others were photographing a classic city character reading the paper, I was on the sidewalk, sitting next to a Starling, my finger on the shutter button. I had never come this close to a bird before — it was within arm’s reach! I was using a relatively short lens (24-105mm), but the bird was eating and I didn’t seem to be a bother. When I got home to look at the photos, I could not believe it.
It was an adrenaline rush. I felt like I had gotten the most amazing photos, like they could be on the cover of National Geographic. Looking back, the photos were okay at best, certainly not magazine worthy, but the excitement they brought me made me want more. I began looking for places with wildlife, mostly in Central and Prospect Parks. I took countless photos of whichever cute little thing would come close enough, and although it was mostly squirrels and sparrows, I was excited.
A while later I got myself a telephoto lens, one that did not require birds to let me near them to photograph them. I was going to the park more often, capturing more birds. At first it was an Oriole up in a tree or a Mallard on her nest. Soon I began noticing the differences between the Red-bellied and Downy Woodpeckers, how the deceptively named Red-bellied has a striking red crown while the Downy is smaller with a checkered black and white body and a red triangle on its head. Soon enough I could distinguish between the raspy screeches of the Blue Jay and the quiet whistles of the Cedar Waxwing.
Without meaning to, I fell in love not only with photography but with birding too. When I would go to the park on Shabbos afternoon, without my camera, I would point out every bird I knew to my friends. Of course, following some religious version of Murphy’s Law, the rarest birds tended to come out when they knew the paparazzi was on break, but the interesting thing was that I no longer had to photograph the birds to enjoy their presence. I could get excited about that Vireo for its own sake.
And as I learned more about the birds I was seeing, my encounters became more numerous and more exciting. The birds I was noticing were rarer and rarer, and the adrenaline rushes never subsided. For each new bird I could recognize, there were two I could not. That gave me the opportunity to learn and I’m still learning to this day.
Learning about birds has been life changing for me. It gave me a hobby that allows me to escape into a wild world. Hobbies are especially valuable because unlike work, or friendships, or school, they stay with you when your life changes. Maybe you enjoy cooking, or drawing, or crocheting, or even, like me, photography. I encourage you to do that more. But also, I want to convince you that birding is unlike any other hobby.
Here is my pitch: Birding requires little investment. All it asks of you is to be aware of your surroundings, to be present with nature. To look up when you hear a chirp. To note the different colors, the different tunes. To learn to discern a Blackbird from a Grackle, a Song Sparrow from a Mockingbird.
It comes with a huge return on investment. In exchange for a bit of your attention, you get happiness. I mean literally, happiness. Research has shown that people who notice the birds around them report significant increases in positive emotions. Anecdotally, I have seen this occur myself.
While home this past summer, I got a bird feeder for our back porch. I set it up for myself, but the effect it had on my family was unexpected.
First there was my 7-year-old niece Shira. She came to our house daily after day camp, and while waiting to be picked up, she sat at the window and watched the birds. We would discuss all the different birds we were seeing, the catbirds and the woodpeckers, the sparrows and the cardinals. She quickly learned to identify them, and we created an activity where we would learn about a bird and she would draw it. She also became an amateur bird photographer, taking some pretty impressive bird photos.
Then there was my mother. She davens Shacharit every morning sitting on the swing on our back porch. At first, she would just observe the birds. But then she began noticing patterns. She noticed that the catbirds usually took two pecks of food at a time while the woodpeckers took three. She realized that the robins were building a nest in a tree in our backyard. She noticed (quite accurately) that the nuthatch is a miniscule ball of absolute energetic cuteness.
She also noticed that it was making her happier. It was bringing her joy, so much so that she asked me to install a birdfeeder in the backyard of a friend of hers who was going through a difficult time. My mother would sit on the porch every morning, observing the birds she knew and taking photos of the ones she did not, to show to me when I woke up.
My grandfather also got the photos and the questions. A lifelong bird lover, I suppose you could say he is the ultimate influence on my birding hobby. He saves me articles from the New York Times about birds, and sends me a message each time a rare bird is spotted somewhere in Minneapolis. This summer, birding became a family hobby, with four generations of us chipping in.
At one point a finch couple made their home on our porch. We followed the process from nest building to mating, from eggs to chicks. My mother would show the nest off to anyone who would look, and we all watched with excitement when the “husband” would come back with food (taken from our feeder of course) and in a flurry of kisses pass it to the “wife” who would feed it to the newborns. It was cute and heartfelt and simply joyful.
But if this promise of happiness does not convince you, then I hope this will: Learning about birds will make your experiences out in nature more meaningful and fun. It will turn a hike into scavenger hunt, a walk in the park into a soliloquy of birdsong. It will make those annoying pigeons less annoying, and will give you another thing to look forward to when you travel.
Birds are everywhere. They come in all shapes and sizes, some predator, some prey, some insect eater and some nectar sucklers. Some iridescent and some, well, a lot of them, dull and brown. Some chant and some sing, some yell and some screech. But all of them, together, promise to bring just a little more joy into your life.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Shloimy Lowy