Lisa Gray writes:
Most bird watchers race around, constantly looking for exotic new species to check off their life lists. ”What if instead we stayed close to home and watched the birds that intersect our lives?” writes Joan Strassman, author of the new book “Slow Birding.” What if we stopped and watched what the birds all around us do?
When Strassman taught biology at Rice University, she’d march her Bird Behavior students around the campus, pointing out to them the spots where they could find three species that are super-common in Houston: Great-tailed Grackles, Northern Mockingbirds, and Yellow-Crowned Night Herons. She assigned the class to watch each species for at least an hour, then write about how each used time and space, and how that behavior differed between the sexes.As avian drama unfolded before their binoculars, the students were hooked. Their curiosity increased, Strassman writes, and they began to ask their own questions. They became keener observers, more alive to the natural world around them.
The rest of us can do that too — and without going farther than home, or a favorite park, or even a grocery-store parking lot where grackles gather. “Sit and watch the birds,” Strassman advises simply. “You might draw them or take notes on what they are doing. Then when you see those birds again, they will seem like old friends.”You will know not just what the grackle is, but what it’s up to.
