Looking at Birds on Purpose

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 make sure I didn’t panic my way through the night. Seeing the odd interesting bird in the sky did nothing for me until I really started looking.

The first hide I visited was The Marsh Hide at Adel Dam Nature Reserve in Leeds which was ten minutes away from where I lived at the time. I went there because I had heard there were kingfishers. I had only seen one once before and I never forgot it. I found the hide, a wooden shed with a bench, and spent a long time just looking. That’s all it was. Thinking of nothing but the things I was looking at. I didn’t need to download an app or go to a class or focus on my breathing or close my eyes. I saw woodpeckers, jays, blue and great tits, mandarins, moorhens, coots, mallards, a nuthatch and chaffinches. I saw so much life through the little rectangular hole in this shed in the woods. They were right there, thriving, and all they were trying to do was not die that day. I didn’t see a kingfisher but I didn’t care because I knew I had found something else. That day I put a picture on Instagram of myself and my partner in the hide with the caption ‘All I want to do is sit in a box and look at some birds’. Maybe I was being facetious but at the same time I knew as soon as I got back home that I couldn’t wait to go there again. I bought binoculars and a field guide the next day.

Since then every spare hour was dedicated to looking at birds. It was summer which meant I could finish work and head down to the hide to spend a few hours with the birds before the sun set. I always walked quickly from the car park, through the park, through the woods and into the hide. Looking back I think about how many birds I would have missed on the way but I absolutely couldn’t wait to get there and settle: notebook and pen out, field guide ready, binoculars round my neck, and later a camera. If I was a runner I would’ve ran there.