I started noticing birds. I’m not a bird watcher, binoculars slung around my neck, standing quietly in a marsh, staring at a tree. No. But I’m an avid bird noticer.
This started in a year when the kids were very little. In fact, maybe only one of them had been born. I don’t know what year it was, and I don’t know what I was thinking, but I can see it in my mind. The meadow down by the canal was covered in snow, and the dog was off leash, bouncing along beside me. This was the old dog, not the new dog, neither of them with us anymore. I was trudging along through the snow when I noticed some small, dark-colored water birds floating along in the canal, dramatic little birds.
I’d not a scintilla of an idea what to call them, and in that moment, I thought, “Why don’t I know what these birds are? How come I can’t name them? Why don’t I know anything about them?” I felt dumb, but also deeply intrigued by these small, black “ducks” with bright white crests.
They were Hooded Mergansers. The internet made short work of the mystery.
After noticing them, I began noticing other birds (and looking for the mergansers everytime I was down by the water). I got a bird guide. I talked about birds with my bird nerd friends. After three decades of relative obliviousness, I knew some stuff about birds.
The thing I’ve noticed in the years since I first noticed them, is that the mergansers only arrive once winter has really taken hold, not just after the first freeze, or the first hint of winter, but only when the season has fully turned. Symmetrically, they only disappear again when winter is over.
It’s pretty fashionable at the moment (maybe since the pandemic) to pay closer attention to “nature,” like another of life’s myriad cure-alls. We just have to “forest bathe” or maintain a bird feeder or notice the shape of the morning light. All of these things are true to a degree. They work. They’re maybe just not miracles, because as with all things, it isn’t that you’re doing them, but the quality with which you’re doing them, that matters.
This week, I noticed the hooded mergansers have arrived, and that winter is here, and it makes me feel better about most things.