The Birder in Me

This story first appeared in “Western Tanager” Volume 87 Number 4 in 2021.

We were at the Alamo River Wetlands counting birds. The other birders and I walked armed with our binoculars and scopes with no room to think about anything but the birds and the storm that was fast-approaching. As we heard different birds’ songs or spotted their plumage, we called them out and put the bird into focus in our lenses: Western Meadowlark, Sandhill Crane, Inca Dove, Abert’s Towhee, Brewer’s Sparrow.

There are so many things to remember about a bird. A species’ song variation, their different colors. Their beaks, eyes. Silhouettes. The way their wings look mid-flight at a distance, or up close. A Blue Heron and I caught each other by surprise, I froze. He took flight. And there are all those names, and those places where you saw a bird for the first time: A lifer.

So many things to remember about a bird, and so many to forget about you, elusive lover. The way you feel to the touch when you are here. Your lips on mine. The way our laughs get muffled against each other’s chests when you hold me under your wings. How we can communicate without talking. We’ve tried to stay away from each other so many times only to return, year after year, like dutiful birds, to the same spot to breed. Out of instinct more than habit.

I tried to forget you, but the birder in me couldn’t any more than I could a Mockingbird’s mating serenade in the middle of a sleepless night, or the when and where I’ve seen my rarest find: A Cinnamon Teal resting in Salton Sea before continuing on its Pacific Flyway path.

In your constant absence, the birder in me, learned to love you like I love migrating birds.

One of the other birders radioed in, “team of Snow Geese on your right.”

            I stopped, looked skyward in awe as I watched the geese pass me by, taken aback by my unconditional love for something so fleeting and uninterested in me.