The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide.

Ornithologist David Sibley’s first birding memory is spotting a yellow-headed blackbird sitting on a wire in California at seven years old. David and his older brother began keeping a life list, tracking all the birds they’d seen throughout their lives. Soon, Sibley’s interest in birds merged with another practice: drawing. Putting the images of the birds he encountered on paper forced Sibley to sharpen his way of seeing; by drawing birds, he got to know them more intimately. He enjoyed identifying patterns in the behaviors of the birds he studied, but he was also delighted when he noticed a break in that pattern, such as a Bewick’s wren suddenly bathing in water.

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, birdwatching became increasingly popular as people sought safe ways to connect in outdoor spaces. Sibley explains that one reason may also have been a desire to return to the cyclical rhythms of the natural world instead of the falsely simulated passing of time indoors. Birdwatching is about seeking patterns and trying to make sense of them, connecting the observer to a larger sense of being. A nature journal is a way of recording those patterns.