Looking at Birds on Purpose

I always hated winter. I hated the cold, the loneliness, the expectation of having to have the perfect Christmas with the perfect people, the dark, the rain, the sludge and the snow. I’ve never been diagnosed with SAD but my depression definitely kicked in harder than usual during winter. Winter was a time to go to work, get home and go straight to bed. Ignore all phone calls and messages, sleep as much as possible, eat every now and again, and wait for it to be over. It was a time for auto-pilot hibernation. A way to be alive without living at all. This feeling isn’t exclusive to winter but every single year I would fail to find anything to motivate me from November until as late as April.  Winter is like a gift for birders. We can see into the trees, like an x-ray, unobstructed by leaves and green. We see bullfinches that usually find safety in denseness as they begrudgingly travel short distances looking for food. We see redwing and fieldfare. We see birds that have trav...

Birding has taught me to hold my tongue. As soon as I started visiting hides I had two aims: see some birds and don’t piss anybody off. I closed doors quietly behind me, whispered sorry when I dropped things like a coffee cup, book, bag, binoculars or camera which have all happened because sometimes, when you’re trying to be as quiet and considerate as possible, the exact opposite happens. With any hobby or interest or community comes snobbery. I have been to hundreds of gigs since my early teens and in every queue I’ve been in I have heard strangers trying to outdo each other with where they’ve been and who they’ve seen. This is something that I try to avoid with birding as much as possible. I couldn’t care less if you travelled to space and saw a celestial warbler if you’re telling me to brag. I recently had someone ask me what make my binoculars are (I don’t know) so he could tell me the make and model and cost of his (I didn’t care). It seems to be very easy for people to l...

Going outside and looking at birds on purpose is one of the best things I have ever done. It took until I was 30 to enjoy going outside for anything other than music. I have travelled all over Europe to as far as Moscow for gigs but I always, at the very front of my mind, just wanted to be home.  Throughout my 20s I lived alone and I was never happy. Not because I didn’t have partners or friends or excellent parents, which I did, but because I had depression. A long list of beautiful things doesn’t make depression go away. I’ve always had depression and I’ve always had a casual interest in birds. I never put the two together and I was never looking to ‘cure’ or improve my depression. My style was to ignore everything, dive into each day with my eyes and ears closed, and power on until it all went away. But that’s the problem; my brain never goes away. I would’ve much rather been by myself in my flat with a pile of books, endless coffee, notebooks, and sleeping tablets to ma...