Birding, Perception, and Pokemon Go
This winter, I received a bird feeder as a gift, and it’s changed how I move through life. It’s a small plastic feeder that uses suction cups to stick to a window. The first time I saw that type of feeder it was amazing. My brother had one and his cat would stand right at the window, chattering in that weird way cats do when they really wish they were eating birds, but the birds would come and eat seeds anyway. The tree outside our bedroom is full of birds, and I wanted that same kind of feeder to see what types of birds we could get at our window. All the same, I didn’t expect that bird feeder to reshape how I interact with the world.
Perception is a powerful thing. We’re constantly barraged with stimuli. Our brains funnel all of those senses down to a point where our consciousness isn’t completely overwhelmed. Babies are just learning to do this, and they always look utterly shocked and befuddled by everything. Once we’re good at interpreting our senses, we have our perception of the world that allows us to function, but in that perception we ignore a lot of what our senses pick up. We don’t perceive everything that we sense. As I’ve said before, when I lose a glove in the middle of the floor, and I’m looking right at it but don’t see it, that’s the power of perception over sensation. The light is still hitting my eyes, but my brain doesn’t recognize it as a glove.
My bird feeder pulled back the curtain on just how much I’d been hearing and seeing birds and neither understanding nor perceiving them. I’d been living in this apartment for a year when I got the feeder, and there must have always been birds out in the trees, but I never really noticed. Now I see chickadees and cardinals, house finches, goldfinches, blue jays and nuthatches. The chickadees stay for a moment then flit away. The cardinal mates, the male startlingly red and the female a more demure buff, feed each other seeds, one of the cutest things that I’ve seen. The house finches settle into the feeder, thinking of making it a home. Blue jays are so enormous I worry the feeder can’t carry their weight, though I’ve seen it hold them ten times before. White-breasted nuthatches look and sound like tiny penguins. My window is a portal to a world teeming with life I’d never perceived before.
And now that I know that such sweet, and goofy, and magnificent birds are just outside, I see birds everywhere. In my previous life, I’ve probably heard a song sparrow sing hundreds of times, and even if I noticed the song, I certainly couldn’t recognize it as a song sparrow. Now that I’m consciously listening, now that I know that bird songs have meaning, I hear them everywhere. I hear the laughing call of the colorful northern flickers, and the quick low-to-high song of cardinals. I walk around listening and looking for birds, and now that I’m paying attention I find them everywhere.
I could name a few dozen books that have changed how I think and feel about things, but few things have changed my life in the way this bird feeder has. I’m used to introducing things into my life that change my frame of mind (an excellent book about mushrooms for example) or change how I spend my free time (like baking). Even so, I’m not used to adding something to my life that changes the very way I walk and look and move like birding has. The only similar thing I can think of is Pokemon Go. When I was playing a lot of Pokemon Go, a mobile game that lets you find and catch Pokemon by walking around in real life, I moved in the physical spaces of my life through the lens of Pokemon Go. I changed where I parked so I could get to key locations in the Pokemon Go world. I started walking more so I’d run into more Pokemon.The town itself became merely an accessory to Pokemon Go. There was a mural I’d never noticed that I was suddenly stopping at a couple times a week just because I could get more items and Pokemon there. The park wasn’t just a park, it was also a Cubone nest. The game became an extra layer of sensation that was laid overtop of the normal sensations of light and sound, and that layer of sensation came to dominate my perception of the world.
Birding has been like Pokemon Go, except instead of adding another layer overtop of the world, looking and listening for birds has tuned me to sensations that were always there. Today, Walmart isn’t just the place where I get random stuff, it’s a place with trees where I first saw an American tree sparrow. Downtown isn’t just some shops and a movie theater, it’s where rock pigeons and seagulls live. My front yard is a habitat for robins and starling, and the backyard for finches, nuthatches, and chickadee. While I’m at my desk, I hear song sparrows, and look out the window to try to see them. I hike more, and one of these days I’ll finally see a red-breasted nuthatch. When I walk between buildings, my eyes are in the trees, hoping to see a bird, new or familiar, and if I catch a glimpse I’ll stop and try to get a better look. Honestly, it’s been shocking how much sticking a bird feeder to our bedroom window has transformed my life over the last couple of months, and it fills me with the desire to know, see, and hear more and more. If now I can see birds, what else is right in front of me? What else do I see and not perceive, and how can I change that? Now that I’ve fallen for the birds outside my window, I want to feel that way about everything.
