How to Be a Punk Birder--这么样朋克观鸟员
This is a follow up to Chapter 10 posted the day before yesterday. It prompted me to take a break from Steemit and hit the fields and forests here in Shenzhen for a little PunkTrackerTaoist （朋克追踪道师??) birding.
First of all, you want to look more like these guys:
And less like these guys:
Punks are unburdened by possessions. Fortunately, there are really only three things (or less) you need to go birding:
- A pair of binoculars--get the best pair you can afford. I got these Bushnell Legend 10x42s for under $200. They are the best pair of nocs you can buy for under $1000, so why buy an $800 pair? And having looked through many a pair, it’s hardly worth the extra grand to buy better. I also still keep my first pair of Swift Ultralights just in case.
- A field guide—for whatever area you’re birding. I live in China so I pretty much need A Field Guide to the Birds of China by Michael MacKinnon. If you’re in an English-speaking country, Europe or South America, there’s probably more choices, especially for North America. Get whichever one you like best. I also keep Birds of East Asia by Mark Brazil because there’s some overlap and it has better illustrations.
3 Something to carry them with—this is completely up to you. My friend @jamonchina and I designed our own birding bag which we use. Plans to produce and market it just didn’t jibe with the numbers we crunched for the enterprise. Pockets or your hands will do.
Anything else to the birding experience is superfluous. In fact, you don’t even need any of that. If you just sit quietly and still in the woods, the birds will come to you. I promise. And you will learn a lot. More than any PhD ornithologist with a $2500 Nikon scope with built-in digital camera. You may not learn the names of the birds right away, but you’ll knew everything else about them, even their secrets.
Look at what one site recommends for a day out birdwatching:
Why the hell would you lug all this stuff into the field?
Look at the size of this guy’s camera. You know why he needs a camera this size? Precisely because he schleps around a camera this size! He can’t move quietly and carefully enough to get close enough to the birds to see them without it!
Harry Dean Stanton teaches us in Repo Man that the life of a repo man is always intense.
Repo Man is really just a metaphor for ‘punk’ in this movie. So how do you be intense while birding? It’s certainly not by having a car chase or playing loud music. Intensity in birdwatching means two things: 1) awareness, and 2) fearlessness.
Awareness results from an inner-peace and quietude that opens yourself to the world outside. Some call it the alpha state, referring to the brainwaves that characterize the intensely aware and quiet state. Walking slowly and quietly in wide-angle vision is the best way to achieve it in nature. Go slowly and quietly. Look at everything at once and nothing in particular. Your eyes and ears will open in ways you didn’t know about before. Eventually you will see and hear things with almost supernatural ability according to casual observers. But fuck them, it’s actually MORE natural for humans to be in this state of awareness than the stupid, zombie-like state urban humanity walks around in daily.
Fearlessness means going off the trail into the trailless woods. Climbing over walls and fences. Negotiating a perilous slope. Wandering into new territory. Ignoring interlopers who want to strike up a conversation and causing them think you’re rude. Fuck them, it’s really they who are rude. Traveling light, as discussed above, means that you can do all these things more easily, or make a quick getaway if need be, especially when pursued by security.
That brings us to our next point. People mistakenly think that birding is a social activity, like these people:
It isn’t. Go alone or in a very small group of no more than four with people who can move as quietly and carefully as you can and who won’t feel slighted if you want to hang quietly in one spot while they go on. Certainly they might want to do the same, and you shouldn’t feel slighted either. In fact, being a punk, you shouldn’t care one iota what they want to do. See how easy that is?
There are a few things you don’t want to do. For example, for God’s sake, don’t wear one of these:
You also don’t need the latest apps and gadgets. The latest iPad birding apps, android apps, pocket tools, flip charts, water bottles, birding journals, etc., are just more crutches to lean on and more shit to weigh you down. I have never read a birding journal or magazine. They only distort your observations. Go in blank and let the birds teach you themselves. Being an “empty vessel” in the Taoist sense of the word is not ‘ignorance’, but biasing your mind with what other people tell you is. However, I did read the book and see the movie The Big Year.
There is one other important exception to reading: What the Robin Knows by Jon Young. This book teaches you how to learn from the birds, rather than telling you what you should know about them.
Do not keep a journal. The time you spend recording could be spent looking at and listening to birds, or moving to a new location. Don’t burden yourself with a “Life List” like so many birders do.
It’s true that competing with other birders for numbers is one way of “being intense”. So I allow for one exception to this rule: when doing a Big Year, journaling is cool. Jon Young would probably disagree with me. But I warn you, the more you compete for numbers, the less you learn from the birds.
Finally, before I conclude I’d like to mention Carl Payne. I met Carl at Tracker School in the 90s. He was socially inept, awkward, and had no fashion sense whatsoever. He was immature for his age. He was gangly. The classic dork.
Due to circumstances I was forced to work with Carl. And I began to realize, I liked the guy more and more as time went on. We even sneaked out of class together in his or my car to hit the Wawa for coffee or get a junk food fix, or buy dip. For some reason, he loved a singer who sounded a lot like Jimmy Buffet, but wasn’t. I can’t remember the guy’s name now. Carl didn’t care if you liked it or not, he loved it and it was his driving music. Carl did his own thing and didn’t care what other people thought about him.
One day I turned to Carl and said, “I figured out why I like you. You’re so uncool, it’s cool.”
He laughed hysterically and then nodded, “Yep. I think you might’ve nailed it.”
The other people in the car nodded agreement.
So the last piece of advice is this: If you really want to be a punk birder, ignore everything you’ve just read, and do your own damn thing. Ultimate PunkTrackerTaoist Master (朋克追踪道师??) Carl Payne will love you for it. And so will I.
