The Sky's the Limit

...but for the general reader, this latter chunk can be hard going, what with the lack of juicy anecdotes and semihistorical legends...

...Weidensaul even knows someone who kept a list of birds she saw while copulating...

...Call it compulsion, or masochism, or inspiration— what else can explain why birders get up at ungodly hours and trek to smelly places such as sewage lagoons to look for small brown jobs picking along the edges of said lagoon...

...But toward the end of the 19th century, powerful and infl uential women began to put their stamp on the world of natural history studies: Martha Maxwell, Florence Merriam Bailey, Harriet Lawrence Hemenway, Minna B. Hall, Cordelia Stanwood, Mabel Osgood Wright—all overcame the structural sexism of the age and collected birds, or wrote about them, or in the case of Hemenway and Hall, started the movement to ban bird feathers in women’s fashions, which led to the modern conservation movement...

...I simply don’t know most of the people I meet when I go out birding...

...of Mark Catesby, who traveled throughout the southeast shooting and painting birds and writing about the new wildlife he was fi nding in America for his public back in England...

...Weidensaul starts with an anecdoterich series of chapters on early American naturalists and ornithologists...

...Still, there were really only about 50 or 100 active birders in the eastern part of the state...

...Most birders “collect” birds, in the sense that identifi cation and ticking off on the list is all there is to birding—all while bird habitat, and natural unspoiled habitat of all sorts, is disappearing at a faster and faster rate...

...That was the early 18th century...

...Of course, as a beginning birder, I traveled more and introduced myself to more people and asked more questions...

...In the 1970s, within a year of when I started birding, I knew almost everyone in the eastern Massachusetts birding scene by sight and name (I had a lot better memory then...

...He knows the birding world...

...Then, for the fi nal quarter, Weidensaul returns to his roots...

...When I read that I wondered which one of us had been drinking...

...Hickey had a load of suggestions about what birders could do with their time other than chase and list rare birds...

...By the middle of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, new explorers such as John Bartram and Lewis and Clark of expedition fame were opening the central and western parts of North America to natural history and ornithological exploration...

...Weidensaul’s such a good storyteller that he sometimes loses track of one story and then starts another one, but eventually the stories resolve and we are on our way to the modern era...

...Now, if I can only get my birding friends to read this to the end...

...Birding mainstream...

...Nowadays, I have absolutely no idea of the total numbers, but just the list of subscribers to massbird, the local birding listserve, must exceed 500...

...In language that ranges from subtle, understated, and somber to peevish and impatient, Weidensaul bears witness to his own conversion from “ticker,” “twitcher,” or lister to bird-watcher to naturalist...

...and an effort that is used to draw schoolchildren who, once they see an owl barely larger than a dinner glass, are likely to become hooked on birds...

...Those obscure spots along the Boston shore which were just mine to bird now have their dozens of young and eager observers, who know their birds and who also, and often, get stunning photos of the birds they see...

...Scott Weidensaul wants to be the prophet who brings new people into the orbit of birds, as well as the Jeremiah who warns birders about the folly of their heedless pursuit of the record and the list...

...Actually, you keep multiple lists: your life list (all the birds species you’ve ever seen), your year list, your feeder or yard list...

...Indeed, the kaleidoscopic stories of criss-crossing personalities and bird information, politics and human relations, keep things racing along...

...This idea was pooh-poohed by ornithologists for many years, but then hibernating Common Poorwills were discovered by modern ornithologists in the 1940s...

...If you want to get into birding, this is a great introduction...

...Yet for three-quarters of his book, he stays with the normal crowd who go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up at a reasonable hour and whose idea of a day at the beach is sitting under an umbrella with a good book rather than tromping around the mudfl at looking at little blobs of sandpipers trying to see which one might be the Siberian...

...He wants to preach “beyond the list...

...Weidensaul does not make it clear, but I want to make it very clear: Birders are really different...

...Weidensaul’s telling of the Audubon/Wilson meeting is mysteriously spread out over two chapters, with a beginning that sets you up for a twist ending...

...Still—birding mainstream...

...A delightful vignette involves the Hopi observation that certain nightjars sleep through the winter in a “deathlike trance...

...All these tales are inspiring, and fun to read, whether you’re a birder or not...

...Wilson was peddling his paintings of American birds and Audubon was just beginning to plan his collection of American bird paintings...

...He knows the people I know—or at least I want to know...

...He suggested fi eld studies and behavior studies and statistical studies of common birds, and though he inspired many people, the story of modern birding (so far) has been one that is diametrically opposed to the Hickey credo...

...You’ve got to be kidding...

...one-day Big Day lists and Big Sit lists...

...He describes the work that he and a group of volunteers do in the Pennsylvania woods in late fall, mistnetting and banding Saw-whet owls, an effort that has taught us a great deal about this extremely common, poorly known, and little-studied raptor...

...He discusses the origins of fi eld guides and describes the weaknesses and strengths of the various types in detail...

...Then come the big names: Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon who, improbably, met in a store in Louisville and parted amid mutual disdain and jealousy...

...Weidensaul then explains that one turn in birding not taken in the 1940s was suggested by Joseph Hickey, who wrote A Guide To Bird Watching...

...He goes birding with David Sibley and hobnobs with Rich Stallcup and Pete Dunne...

...Yet Weidensaul has targeted a larger issue, and that becomes his focus toward the end...

...His manner is engaging and his pedigree in the birding world couldn’t be higher...

...Says Weidensaul: “Sadly, I don’t know the Hopi . . . for ‘We told you so.’” Many more stories follow: of John White and John Lawson exploring the Soheil Zendeh is a birder in Massachusetts...

...city, county, state, country, and world lists...

...What they read, what they think, how they see things, how they plan vacations, their vocabulary, the angle of their necks, the tilt of their heads, the roving eyes—let’s not pretend that birders are just like other people but with a “burning interest” in birds or any other such nonsense...

...After all, he is a native of Pennsylvania and he is a birder...

...This is not “ordinary” behavior, and Weidensaul is part of the fraternity that thinks such behavior is normal...

...But then I got to refl ecting about my own experience...

...wilderness of the Carolinas...

...The role of women in early American ornithology has been sparsely documented...

...If you’re a birder, you keep a list...

...or tromp through bug-infested swamps listening for the sibilant voices of warblers so high up in trees that they don’t even try to see them...