Grumpy Old Birder
Bo Beolens on how birdwatching as a hobby has a positive effect on mind and body
Bo extols the virtues of birdwatching for a healthy mind and body
MINDFULNESS SEEMS to be the buzzword of the last year or so… it’s a therapeutic technique, the idea being that you achieve a desired mental state by focusing your awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations etc. It’s not a new idea of course, just a recasting of an old one. Hindus were meditating 3,500 years ago! Our pastimes are not all adrenaline rich activity, some are very much in the mindful mode. Isaac Walton wrote in The Complete Angler (1653) “God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.” He also reported Sir Henry Wotton saying “…angling was an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;” and “that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it.” To my mind, everything these guys said about fishing I can say about birding, but in Spades! I have maintained for many years that a day spent birding is a day added to
The more we adopt this mindful way of being, the more we will do for birds
your life. But like other pastimes some of us are more mindful than others. Just as there are anglers who trudge the banks spinning lures or whipping flies across rushing streams, so there are birders who want to rush through the countryside adding ticks. Any long-term reader of this column will know that I believe we “also serve who only stand and wait”. You will also know that more and more pundits are declaring the need for wilderness, not for the sake of the planet, or even its wildlife, but because it impinges on our own mental health. Sure, we need green and unpolluted spaces to act as the world’s lungs and reservoirs of wildlife, but, even if that was not the case, they would be needed to keep our souls in fine fettle. Why is this important to more than the individual birder’s wellbeing? Simply, because the more we adopt this mindful way of being, the more we will incidentally do for the good of birds. Manning the conservation barricades always leaves one open to the accusation that we are just tree-hugging, woolly-minded, liberal do-gooders putting the needs of Hawfinches above that of humans. Have you ever sat on a bird reserve bench with the sun on your face, Swifts wheeling over the reed-beds, warblers chattering in the bushes and frogs croaking in the stream; drifting between sleep and wakefulness revelling in the world as it once was and could and should be once again? We birders can leave the rat race’s existentialist nightmare and show others how to join the human race again. Bo Beolens runs fatbirder.com and other websites. He has written a number of books