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Illustration by Drew Shannon
I started birding during the pandemic (cliché, I know).
I wasn’t yearning to reconnect with nature, nor was I looking for an excuse to buy a Tilley hat. I started because as soon as I got my first close-up look at a bird, I knew this hobby was going to help me manage my pain.
I was born with Klippel-Trénaunay syndrome, a rare vascular disorder. As a child, I spent a good chunk of time in the hospital. As an adult, I perpetually have “an appointment” of some kind. Because of my unpronounceable disability, I’ve lived with pain, both physical and psychological, my whole life. But things blew up in 2020.
I was working in advertising. Despite the pandemic-induced economic slowdown, the ad industry barely skipped a self-serving beat. My anxiety levels were wild, worrying about meeting one unnecessarily tight deadline after another.
Because my mind wouldn’t stop, my body did. It broke down. The pain was crazy. Basic tasks became impossible. So I slowed down. I took up things that required presence: yoga, meditation, journalling. And over time, the seemingly self-indulgent mindfulness stuff started to work. So when I reached for a pair of binoculars one day in rural Ontario and realized that birding required a huge amount of awareness, I added it to my self-care routine.
When my pain was finally under control, I decided to combine my new-found hobby with my long-standing passion: travel. After cross-referencing my vacation bucket list with a generic list of birding hot spots, my husband and I planned a trip to La Antigua, a picturesque city in the highlands of Guatemala.
Knut, the co-owner of Cayaya Birding Guatemala, picked us up at 4 a.m. A bespectacled German wearing quick-dry everything, Knut was straight out of central casting. We drove in sleepy silence to Finca el Pilar, a nature reserve just outside town, where Knut purposefully pulled over at a seemingly random place.
We stepped out of the car and onto the set of a horror movie. In the pitch-black forest, brown-backed solitaire thrushes produced sci-fi torture-device sounds, while highland guan birds blew their evil clown whistles.
To temper the sense of impending doom, I asked Knut, “Why here?”
“The territories of several pairs of fulvous owls overlap here – a meeting place of sorts. It’s a great spot to see one.”
“I can’t see my hand in front of my face. How am I going to spot an owl?” I thought, but I kept my dumb question to myself.
Knut pulled a speaker out of his fanny pack. After he fiddled with the contraption, it let out a hoot. He explained that playing the fulvous call would make resident owls think something was up and – fingers crossed – they’d come to check it out.
Just as dawn was breaking and I was losing interest, a non-digital hoot rang out. Our fulvous friend swooped into a nearby tree where I could barely discern its black silhouette. Answering my dumb question, Knut readied the scope and shone a flashlight about five feet away from the bird.
The scope revealed the details of every feather. Feeling I should pay reverence to the creature that has captivated humanity for centuries, I muttered, “Thanks owl, thanks universe.” I stepped back from the scope and made 5 a.m. small talk.
“The light doesn’t bother them?”
“No. They like it. Useful for hunting.”
That was all I could muster up.
After a few minutes of ogling, the bird vanished without a sound.
More than 60 different species later (highlights included pink-headed warblers, northern emerald toucanets and a mountain trogon), our two-day expedition was over and Knut invited us to his place to go over “the checklist.”
Checklists are huge in the birding community. Birders have lists for everything: things they’ve seen, heard, think they’ve seen/heard etc. In their purest form, lists can memorialize a field day. On the flip side, they can turn innocent birders into joyless fanatics, more interested in the next bird than the bird in front of them.
I hate to admit it, but I couldn’t wait to get box-checking.
From his front yard, Knut intermittently interrupted our Type A behaviour to point out who was visiting his bird feeders. A clan of bushy-crested jays. Oh look, a slate-throated redstart … I was hoping to see one of those. I held my breath when the violet sabrewing hummingbird touched down. Like, honestly, who designed these things? Incredible.
After most certainly overstaying our welcome (I would have moved in), Knut, who had research to do, drove us back to our hotel.
We sat in the back seat, staring out the windows, and took stock of the day. Hiking the outskirts of La Antigua with Knut was a huge success. But we had to admit that loafing around on his front lawn was definitely the highlight.
Birding keeps reminding me that if I slow down and pay attention, what I’m looking for is usually right in front of me.
Krista Raspor lives in Toronto.