In the Way of Brid*

Why do I go birding?
Because most days it feels like a wonderful gift; for nigh on fifty years thus far - a fulfilling life experience.

Should we care about the label?
It matters not whether we are considered bird-watchers or birders, ornithologists or bird-lovers, bird-spotters or rarity hunters, tickers, twitchers or listers.

Are there 'philosophical implications'?
The gift of 'birding' has encouraged me to focus daily upon dynamic meditation; the interplay of the human mind and nature. Specifically to concentrate upon the way this interplay should enhance our life, both as humbled individuals and in the greatest groups.

Dynamic meditations?
Nurturing the gift of birding demands some daily effort. Above all the willingness to allow such time as is necessary to still the mind. This is essential in order to observe nature sharply. A daily chore of getting down to it and seeing through the confusion of our egotistical thinking. This meditative activity is further complicated these days by all the cares of the greenhouse gloom, for a global climate savaged by the death throes of our latest, greatest behemoth: free market fundamentalism. The Frankenstein's monster of unrepentant materialist philosophy. A beast out of control, one that has gone far beyond the decimation of nature.

On reflection it seems that in addition I've been hoping to visualize ways by which we may yet transform (or perhaps restore?) the potential of our species. Thoughts that might turn us away from being nature's brutal aggressor, steering us onto a course where we can evolve in greater harmony with Earth's immutable natural processes.

How have such considerations come to direct my thinking?
There's a phrase I learned in every language that I've ever struggled to use (or avoided using!). Often only one phrase was learned! Whether creeping around the bushes, peering between the trees or hiding among the boulders; in eastern India, southern Thailand, western Ethiopia, or as nowadays here in northern Tanzania; all too often I've felt obliged to explain or at least excuse my odd behaviour.

Here in Tanzania it's by the words: "Ninapenda ndege", or in Maasailand "Ninatafuta emotonyi na daratiki".

"I am searching for birds."

Because for fifty years I've felt most at home when birding - and yes - I do love my 'feathered friends'.

It's also true that of late (and with ever increasing frequency) I have asked myself: "Why Birds - Why Birder?"

Instead of providing an answer to those two questions might I provide some occasional thoughts - one or two 'of mine' and one or two from others; thoughts to which, down the years, we've become attached?

Birding and the Bond
At its very best the pursuit of birds creates a powerful bond. A bridge which provides spiritual or psychological continuity between our 'own mind' in this current moment and 'the mind'. An awareness of being fully here in the now, here one hundred per cent, yet also being part of something that's continuously evolving, flowing from our most distant past. Connecting us to, or immersing us within, universal energies channeled through powerful memories. These days, for most of us, such memories operate largely in the unconscious, in a history of shared human experiences within nature. An intuitive history of something which has been laid down, life after life, into the depths of an instinctual memory. Yet a memory into which, given time and patience, anyone can tap.

For countless generations these links were transmitted face to face; orally from adult to adult and from adult to child. For us to survive; living in small closely interrelated groups entirely dependent upon the forest and bush for our 'daily beef'; our knowledge of both the utility and numinosity of the natural world, of which we were so clearly an integral part, needed to be very great indeed. However our undisputed success at this appears to have led, via pastoralism and resource over-exploitation, to the predominance of settled farming societies. These facilitated the accumulation of non-living cattle; that is chattel, later capital. With this the bonds of ecological dependence and awareness rapidly began to break and with the establishment of ever more sophisticated power castes (culminating in our current global 'military-industrial commodification' complex), our wild knowledge became ever more marginalised. Consequently after only a few thousand years of such developments we have delivered such awesome degradation unto the Earth our only home that the entire planet now appears to be mobilising against us.

Far from being the stuff of aboriginals, simple, archaic and anachronistic, it's likely that at least nuances of a sophisticated knowledge system 'about the wild' remain fundamental, necessary for any human society. It is my belief that rediscovering and restoring greater nature awareness today has as big a part to play in any continued well-being, and probably in our continued survival, as at any time in the few million years of our congeneric past, i.e. in all of hominid history.

Nevertheless in the over stimulated, yet increasingly ill-informed and hence increasingly fractured societies of the present day some of us, okay just call us birders, of the terminal generation are able via internet and sms to pass our birding stories, in the winking of an eye, right around the world. Ideally to share our bond almost as easily, yet with far less conviviality, as if we were reminiscing face to face seated in a circle among the flickering shadows of our evening fire.

If the computer monitor is my hearth, then from this fire side seat in front of the desk top terminal, out over the dazzling screen, I can look into the wildest little yellow-green garden in all of Arusha city. The garden stretches from the window nearly one hundred and fifty metres in the direction of Mount Meru (6km to the north east). It's just past midday; and quite warm (23-24 degrees Celsius) in our ebbing 'winter season': the East African cool and dry. Consequently the daily trajectory of the lord our sun appears to be returning southward across the sky. Everyone and every thing appears to be anticipating the short rains which must surely come? Though they may be three moons away.

Writing here this morning I have recorded seventeen bird species; all from the 'PC Hearth'; that is from inside the house.

Spotted Morning Trush: photo Martin GoodeySpeckled Mousebird: photo Martin GoodeyThe day began, as is usual, with the glorious bursting melodies of Spotted Morning Thrushes and a Cape Robin-Chat which at six a.m. herald the pallid flush of dawn beyond the eastern hedge. Thereafter our daily work began. One fun job is routing the biodegradables toward their would-be end users.

For example there's a tiny over-ripe banana, which your Lanius-loving author has impaled, hopefully in a somewhat shrike-like manner, upon the secateured twig of a sage bush beside this study-bedroom window at which I write. A family of three Baglafecht Weavers have just feasted upon it; it is the orange-fronted male who, so very delicately, feeds the waiting olive juvenile.
Baglafecht Weaver: photo Martin GoodeyYellow-vented Bulbul: photo Martin GoodeyA pair and occasionally single Yellow-vented Bulbuls come and go at the same banana. From the roof Grey -headed Sparrows chip-chirrup thick and deeply, their voices so much richer than the shrill chattering of introduced indicus House Sparrows who thankfully have as yet failed to maintain any presence in our green eaves. Afro-endemic family members of the Coliiformes, specifically Speckled Mousebirds, like disheveled miniature hen pheasants fired from a catapult, rocket in relay across the rankled grassy width of the garden two metres beyond the sage bush.

Red-billed Firefinch: photo Martin GoodeyAfrican Wagtail: photo Martin GoodeyAt 1231– an adult female and immature Red-billed Firefinch just landed on the window sill only three feet from the key board. All around the calls of birds fill the air. An African Pied Wagtail sings emphatically short, sharp yet very sweet phrases from the balcony. A gang of twenty clowns - Bronze Mannikins - arrives with much burry-purring to swing like a net of little brown yo-yos among the lacey pink of prairie grass heads ripening in the midday sun. Variable Sunbird: photo Martin GoodeyRed-eyed Dove: photo Martin GoodeyMale Amethyst Sunbirds chase each other (and Variable Sunbirds) through the trees and their heavy drip-like chip notes provide a background beat against which the "a tick fior yiou "(sic!) of the bulbuls always provides some sense of purpose. A cone billed grosbeak-like Streaky Seed-eater arrives near the banana whilst the soft "peeuwrr-peeuwrr" contact calls of wintering bands of brush tongued Abyssinian White-eyes ricochet all around the garden. Other birds noted this morning include that impresario the 'one and only' Gonolek de Boubou (Tropical Boubou), a horde of percussive Red-eyed Doves in their splendid mauve and pink uniforms who repeat ad infinitum - "who are you .. with a 2:2?" as it is rendered here by my Greek friend Costa! Somewhere close there's the 'squip-popp' of Singing Cisticola and those ubiquitous marauders of the shabby Afro-urban scene, natty Pied Crows cheap as chipsi, sharp as hell, they're never down for long, smart birds always, passing overhead, they prefer simply to commute straight through our airspace.

Purple Grenadier: photo Martin GoodeyRuppels Robin-chat: photo Martin GoodeyA pair of Purple Grenadiers add a very tropical livery to the mannikins whom they've just joined in a path through the long grass. Very occasionally a chocolate coloured Yellow-billed Kite nosing south from a winter holiday in Darfur, or somewhere by the Sudd, makes a rushing sweep across the garden and sends all these passerines packing. It's 1311 now and I've not yet made it to twenty species. Better stop this writing and get outside. Out into my wilding garden refuge. There I'll slowly pace the narrow paths, between tangled lantana thickets and the rampant knuckled fists of weeds, like some old incarcerated Leopard padding round his enclosure. Thereby to temporarily assuage the thirst; thirst for the thrill of the chase, for seeing a lot more brids, for another birding safari, far from this computer, outside the mission.

At 1318 our single Ruppell's Robin-Chat pipes-up the twenty: "deet do-da deet"; he or she remains utterly invisible in the dreadlocks hedgerows that surround our plot and is all the better for that.

So in my opinion, with or without any philosophy, if you take-up the way of bridds, of birds and birding, and turn your world just a little inside out, you'll almost certainly never get bored, and very rarely will you have to walk alone.

Pied Crow: photo Martin Goodey

* Old English brid, (late Northumbrian i.e. Anglo-Saxon) bird, of unknown origin and without cognates