The spark bird is the bird that gets you into birding - that lights the fire. There's a before and after. When you see the spark bird you know that you’re never going to stop paying attention to birds. Before that, you’re kind of like asleep to them.
At the time, I had gone through a major personal change where I'd left the tech industry. I came across the book 'How to Do Nothing' by Jenny Odell. She talks about noticing birds as a way of using your phone less. I was desperate for that.
I went outside - I was very dubious. I couldn't believe I was going to try it, but within a minute I heard and then saw a bird I didn't know existed. It happened to be a type of Californian oriole called the Hooded Oriole. They're vividly colored and beautiful. I'd 35 years to notice this bird, but I'd never seen it. That was a wake up call where I realized I'd been moving around the world not noticing anything. That was enough to make me excited to walk around every day after work for 15 minutes and just see what else I hadn't noticed. That's when I discovered some of the more quasi mystical properties of bird watching where I was like, wow, I'm meditating. I'm so present. My mind is changing because of this.
Before I started this group, I described myself as a social camel where I could go long periods of time without tapping into a group or community. But I always felt everyone would benefit from bird watching. Yet most people I knew, my friends and family, didn't have a natural exposure to it. So I thought if I started doing it at a local park, I would meet Brooklynites who are kind of like my friends and family and I'd bring it to them. The community part is not something I explicitly set out to create. It just sort of happened. It's been wonderful and surprising.
The more proximate change I would hope to have is to help people become more aware of the natural world. Outside of the walks, if someone were to notice a bird they would have otherwise been shut off to, that would make me really happy.
At the time, I had gone through a major personal change where I'd left the tech industry. I came across the book 'How to Do Nothing' by Jenny Odell. She talks about noticing birds as a way of using your phone less. I was desperate for that.
I went outside - I was very dubious. I couldn't believe I was going to try it, but within a minute I heard and then saw a bird I didn't know existed. It happened to be a type of Californian oriole called the Hooded Oriole. They're vividly colored and beautiful. I'd 35 years to notice this bird, but I'd never seen it. That was a wake up call where I realized I'd been moving around the world not noticing anything. That was enough to make me excited to walk around every day after work for 15 minutes and just see what else I hadn't noticed. That's when I discovered some of the more quasi mystical properties of bird watching where I was like, wow, I'm meditating. I'm so present. My mind is changing because of this.
Before I started this group, I described myself as a social camel where I could go long periods of time without tapping into a group or community. But I always felt everyone would benefit from bird watching. Yet most people I knew, my friends and family, didn't have a natural exposure to it. So I thought if I started doing it at a local park, I would meet Brooklynites who are kind of like my friends and family and I'd bring it to them. The community part is not something I explicitly set out to create. It just sort of happened. It's been wonderful and surprising.
The more proximate change I would hope to have is to help people become more aware of the natural world. Outside of the walks, if someone were to notice a bird they would have otherwise been shut off to, that would make me really happy.
