Here’s a cool thing about birdwatching—almost every guide and organization has their set of ethics around the activity. So, for example, the American Birding Association Code of Ethics are as follows: 

1. Respect and promote birds and their environment. (don’t intentionally flush a bird just for a photo, don’t destroy their habitat just to get closer, etc)
2. Respect and promote the birding community and its individual members.
3. Respect and promote the law and the rights of others

That means that inherent in the act of birdwatching is respect. For the birds and their habitats and for our fellow humans. That’s pretty rad. 

In the relatively short amount of time I’ve devoted to birdwatching I found that it’s opened my eyes to the idea of respect and a whole lot more. Over the next few posts I hope to cover some of the things I’ve learned from birdwatching and how that’s translated into my everyday life. First up—It’s all in the details. 

Details Matter

One aspect of birdwatching that I learned very quickly is that it is way harder than I expected. (In fact, there’s a whole thing to be about that – it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect and we’ll dive into that in a later post). That realization came shortly after I’d identified all the bluebirds and cardinals in my front yard and began really looking at all the other birds flying and fliting around. Y’all – some of those mf’ers don’t look all that different from each other. 

Take these sparrows—the Song Sparrow and the White-throated Sparrow. On the surface, there isn’t much difference – especially at a glance. And often, a glance might be all that we get. Afterall, these are some shifty lil bastards. 

But, it’s once we start looking at the details that we can begin to see some important differences. 

Let’s start top down with the coloration of the crown. Right from the start we can see that the White-throated Sparrow has a darker coloration than the Song Sparrow. 

Next up the eyebrow stripe and eyestripe. The coloration is similar here in both cases, but there are differences. The eyebrow on the WTS is a bit wider and the eyestripe is definitely more pronounced and darker.  

And finally, it certainly becomes more evident if you can get a different look at the bird as well. 

These are small things, right? Details. But it’s when we start paying attention to them that they add up to something larger. 

I think this most certainly resonates most for me  as a writer, where details can literally change the meaning of my work. For example – think of a rock. Chances are the rock that each of you is thinking of varies in shape, color, and size. But if I tell you to think of a pebble or to imagine a boulder, now all a sudden we’re a lot closer to a shared and uniform understanding. And, in writing, I would never mention a boulder when I meant a pebble. It’s those details that make all the difference. 

Also I’ve found that I pay attention to the world around me a bit more. I do my best to take in those details that I might have missed before.