Birdwatching Quotes

“You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush.”
― John Burroughs, Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and Other Papers

“Sometimes I think that the point of birdwatching is not the actual seeing of the birds, but the cultivation of patience. Of course, each time we set out, there's a certain amount of expectation we'll see something, maybe even a species we've never seen before, and that it will fill us with light. But even if we don't see anything remarkable - and sometimes that happens - we come home filled with light anyway.”
― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir

“Some people are very competitive in their birding. Maybe they'll die happy, having seen a thousand species before they die, but I'll die happy knowing I've spent all that quiet time being present.”
― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir

“On a day like this, I can’t imagine anything better that might happen in a person’s life than for them to start paying attention to birds—to become aware of this magical world that exists all around us, unnoticed by many but totally captivating for those who know its secrets. This kind of spring day, with its bountiful myriads of colorful sprites just arrived from tropical shores, has to be one of the greatest gifts of life on Earth.”
― Kenn Kaufman, A Season On The Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration

“Binoculars, and a hawk-like vigilance, reduce the disadvantage of myopic human vision.”
― J. A. Baker, The Peregrine: The Hill of Summer & Diaries: the Complete Works of J. A. Baker

“There is an unreasonable joy to be had from the observation of small birds going about their bright, oblivious business”
― Grant Hutchison, The Complete Lachlan

“Birds will give you a window, if you allow them. They will show you secrets from another world– fresh vision that, though it is avian, can accompany you home and alter your life. They will do this for you even if you don't know their names– though such knowing is a thoughtful gesture. They will do this for you if you watch them.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds

“An army never expects to lose a war to a flightless bird – or any bird, really.”
― Natalie Kyriacou, Nature's Last Dance: Tales of wonder in an age of extinction

“There are approximately ten thousand species of birds on the planet and no single individual has seen them all.”
― Bernd Brunner

“You could do worse than to spend your days staring at blue jays.”
― Julie Zickefoose, Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay

“That little owl with a call as steady as my heartbeat was telling anyone who would listen, ‘I am here.’ We were listening. We’re listening still.”
― Heather Durham, Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust

“Birdwatching, at first glance, seems like a pursuit designed specifically for people who find stamp collecting too stimulating. But oh, how wrong they would be. Behind the courteous nods, the gentle lift of binoculars and the soft pitter-patter of birder footsteps on dew-dappled gum leaves lies a world of unexpected drama – a scandalous underbelly of rivalry, controversy and intrigue. Indeed, what appears to be a peaceful communion with nature masks a tempest of Shakespearean passion.”
― Natalie Kyriacou, Nature's Last Dance: Tales of wonder in an age of extinction

“I sat there and my love to him poured out more and more, and, lo, he flew down to a stump, and then to my knee. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the important thing is the love that goes out from oneself.”
― Agnes Grinstead Anderson, Approaching the Magic Hour: Memories of Walter Anderson

“Bird watching is now North America's second most popular outdoor activity (second only to gardening).”
― Bernd Brunner

“The world is full of people looking for meaning in the shape of a bird not native to this country turning up in this country after all.”
― Ali Smith, Winter

“Birds are magical.
Their flight alone can arouse a clever thought.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“I stood at the window, where I once stood with my father looking out through binoculars, and even now small winged creatures occasionally flitted by, but they were no more than reminders that birds mean nothing at all to me anymore.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police

“The sharp thrill of seeing them [killdeer birds] reminded me of childhood happiness, gifts under the Christmas tree, perhaps, a kind of euphoria we adults manage to shut out most of the time. This is why I bird-watch, to recapture what it's like to live in this moment, right now.”
― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir

“I had forgotten you were a bird-watcher till you reminded me just now. You went in for it at Oxford, I remember. It isn’t a thing I would care to do myself. Not,” I hastened to add, “that I’ve anything against bird-watching. Must be most interesting, besides keeping you” – I was about to say “out of the public houses” but thought it better to change it to “out in the open air”.
“What’s the procedure?” I went on. “I suppose you lurk in a bush till a bird comes along, and then you out with the glasses and watch it.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

“Every day, birds that are defined as common are overlooked. However, as you immerse yourself in the world of birdwatching, you come to appreciate the beauty in the common species as well as the scarcer ones.”
― Joe Harkness, Bird Therapy

“Nature and birdwatching can offer a great deal of stability. In the life of someone living with daily mental health issues, these consistencies can act as an anchor to the present and provide grounding.”
― Joe Harkness, Bird Therapy

“We seem to birds to be chained to planet Earth.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“My mind flits around like that, darts and dives and twitches at times, and other times perches immobile, faintly ruffling in the breeze.”
― Heather Durham, Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust

“To be standing together in a frosty field, looking up into the sky, marvelling at birds and revelling in the natural world around us, was a simple miracle. And I wondered why we were so rarely able to appreciate it.”
― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir

“Every bird at the marsh filled us with a little light. I wondered if I was just so simple that this was all it took. But then I thought, I'm lucky that this is all it takes, and knew that I was especially lucky that this was all it took for my teenaged son, too.”
― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir

“... I had also started to recognise just how positive I felt when I was immersed in the world of birds. My worries seemed to fade into insignificance and when I was feeling stressed, if I counteracted it with some time outside, watching them, it drifted off like birds do, in a stiff breeze.”
― Joe Harkness, Bird Therapy

“It's reassuring to know that the garden birds are there, even when I'm not.”
― Joe Harkness, Bird Therapy

“In that moment, watching the flock of finches, I was allowing myself to become lost and absorbed in the sights in front of me. In these early days of my interest in birdwatching, I was still burdened by an inability to manage and regulate my mental health. Birdwatching quickly became my escape route and I started to notice that when I was out, on my own, experiencing nature and birds in a personal and intimate way, I was more relaxed than I'd ever been before. My breathing rate slowed and I closed my mind to repetitive thoughts and worries. My only focus was observing birds and learning about them. I was losing myself in birds, in a positive way.”
― Joe Harkness, Bird Therapy

“I've always loved that image of prayer as birdwatching. You sit very still because something is liable to burst into view, and sometimes of course it means a long day sitting in the rain with nothing very much happening. I suspect that, for most of us, a lot of our experience with prayer is precisely that. But the odd occasions when you do see what T.S. Eliot... called "the kingfisher's wing" flashing "light to light" make it all worthwhile. And I think that living in this sort of expectancy--living in awareness, your eyes sufficiently open and your mind both relaxed and attentive enough to see when it happens--is basic to discipleship.”
― Rowan Williams, Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life

“The Peregrine sees and remembers patterns we do not know exist: the neat squares of orchard and woodland, the endlessly varying quadrilateral shapes of fields.”
― J.A. Baker, The Peregrine