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Roger Rabbits with |
Control Tower: “Wind zero niner zero at ten…”
Pilot: “Enter left downwind, runway 07/25.”
Control Tower: “Cleared to land.”
It could have been an ATR putting down at TRG. But it was a grey heron making a low pass down my CBD driveway on final approach to a perch high above my deck.
I heard him before I saw him. Flapping a huge, 2m wingspan, it created a deep, pulsing, whooshing sound. The stuff of big planes. What a statement!
Then a partial eclipse as he flew in front of the sun; half a second of blackout. What an arrival!
Followed by that distinctive, raspy, harsh cry – the “fraarnk” or “kaark” and menacing sharp bill snapping. Such an elegant creature, nature should have blessed him with a more melodic repertoire.
Living a lie
I always thought birdwatching was for the birds – a ridiculous, worthless, waste of time. But here was a grey heron and I, eyeing each other intensely from about 5m. I’d been living a lie. Suddenly heron had “outed” me as a latent birder.
Previously, my only interest was scaring off ghastly, manky, pooping pigeons. And wondering why seagulls deserve to be called seagulls when they never go to sea? And last, but not least, what prompted the Auckland Acclimatisation Society to introduce damned sparrows 160 years ago?
Cute and cheeky? Rubbish! They’re flying mice.
Now I’m Googling dietary preferences of the heron. Would he like some Norwegian dill-infused smoked salmon on pumpernickel? Feeding birds, I read, cements a deep connection with nature, a shared closeness with God’s creatures.
So perhaps we need a couple of raptors flying up and down Cameron Rd so we can toss them roadkill? It would create wellbeing in the hood.
Google squawks at me. Don’t feed the heron bread. It’s “dangerous junk food”. Heron does “meat” – fish, frogs, tadpoles. But my fridge only does beer, eggs and blue cheese.
So heron succumbs to his hunting instincts and taxis off runway 07/25 into the neighbouring tidal creek for a scoff. No cats. “Cleared for landing.” It was a breathtaking encounter. ? Soar well, “kaark” well, my friend. I will listen out for you.
Bona fide boom
Now before you snicker, and mock, old people with time to burn, birdwatching has new respectability and popularity. There’s been a bona fide “birdwatching boom”, especially among the Gen Zers in Britain – the first generation born with integrated digital body parts – you know, brain, heart, smartphone and liver.
They’re not trading phones for binoculars, but they’re switching on, in flocks, to birdwatching. Almost 750,000 people, aged 16 to 29, now regularly birdwatch around the UK – up 2% since 2018.
Only jewellery-making is a faster-growing hobby. What a choice.
“Social media’s driving it,” said a local Gen Zer. “And you’re not weird if you’re not alone.” He’s not a card-carrying birder, but he’ll stop and appreciate the warbling of an orchestra bird in a tree. “The embodiment of nature,” he calls it.
He’s the same Gen Zer that shamed me when I arrived home to a family of starlings sheltering from a stormy night on a downpipe under my garage overhang. I was about to shoo them away. “#@*+ off!” After all, they’d pooped all over the pipe.
Saint Gen Zer of Assisi wasn’t having it. “Let them be, they’re not hurting. They’ve chosen your place to be safe and warm and dry for the night. Enjoy the fact.” Oh, the pain of being humbled and humiliated by youth.
A game
In England they say it’s worry about geopolitics that’s driving a positive reconnection with birds and nature. Worry and Pokémon.
Because the popularity of Pokémon rocketed when they released Pokémon Go – a mobile app encouraging users to go into the real world and capture virtual monsters. Birdwatchers leaned in – their apps gamified birdspotting, with every species spotted becoming a virtual collectible card. Birdwatching had become a game. One app amassed 40 million downloads with 2 billion species observations worldwide.
Another explanation was young minds fried by devices, addicted to phones, were seeking an off-ramp, a simple pleasure. They found it in birdwatching.
Their world, or ours?
For the uninitiated, there are distinctions between birdwatchers, or birders, and twitchers.
Twitchers are hardcore, competitive enthusiasts who travel afar to spot rare species and tick them off. Birdwatchers or birders step outside and are immediately curious about what they see and hear.
Like two kingfishers up there on the power lines – bright turquoise, vibrant orange. “They’re quite indifferent to us,” says the Gen-Zer. “Are we in their world, or they in ours? How can you not be impressed. Bits of ‘wild and free’ in an urban setting, making do with the space we provide them,” Gen Zer says.
“Other than pigeons, the birds we see have never been domesticated and simply co-exist alongside us, making our lives that much more pleasant and interesting. Perhaps we should stop and appreciate it more?”
What I didn’t appreciate was booking a front-end loader to remove grey heron’s calling card from my deck, a substantial bird with a corresponding waste output