Here are the next group of stories from the Massachusetts birding community (extended) about what was the spark that made them birders.

Catherine (NH) was hooked by a booming Bittern:

I was fortunate in that my Dad has been a lifelong bird watcher, but I don’t recall his ever pushing my siblings or me to follow his bliss. Still, there quite a few species to be seen around our home, and I was given an antique hard-covered child’s first book of birds when I was around 6 or so.  My folks had a sunflower seed feeder hanging above the front porch, but I read in my book about getting some strange substance called suet (which I pronounced as you would a man’s business attire), and asked my folks if they knew where we could get some so we could see woodpeckers.They obtained suet and hung it from on old onion bag and soon we had hairy and downy woodpeckers at our feeders.

From age 6 or so, birds were my winter pastime.  I enjoyed watching our feeders on snowy days and became familiar with the birds that stayed or arrived with the snow.  In those days (late 50s early 60s), we’d have evening grosbeaks every winter – great flocks of them that came and devoured mass quantities of sunflower seeds.  It’s been decades since I’ve seen flocks like those.

The spark, though, didn’t hit me until one early morning in the spring when I was eight.  Our home was abutted by two abandoned pastures, and beyond them was a small pond surrounded by a sizable cattail swamp.  Every spring a pair of bitterns would set up housekeeping in that swamp, and our early mornings would be punctuated with the male’s strange, booming call.  I knew it was a bittern, because our Dad had told us so years ago; and I knew what  a bittern looked like because I’d looked it up in our Peterson field guide.

But that spring morning, as the male was thundering away in the swamp, I decided that I was going to go see what this bird looked like when he was making his weird music. I wanted to SEE what he did to make that sound! It was a much harder (and soggier) undertaking than I’d imagined it would be, and I spent a good twenty minutes jumping from cattail hummock to cattail hummock – trying hard (and failing) not to muck up the new sneakers that were supposed to last me at least until the end of summer.  I was so intent on where I was putting my feet that I came on the bittern almost before I knew it.  One minute I was grabbing a handful of spent cattail stalks and trying not to tumble in the muck, and then there he was, just twenty feet or so away, on his own hummock.  He was much more handsome than the picture in the book, and I was fascinated by how painful-looking his singing was. Each sound required so much effort that it seemed to my eight-year-old eyes, that he was constantly on the verge of throwing up.  I was absolutely transfixed by that bird – by nature I was rather a fidgety child, but so intent was I on not spooking the bittern that I crouched behind my cattail clump as if frozen.  I don’t know how long I watched him before he finally flew off to sing in some other section of his swamp, but it felt like I stayed watching him for a long time before he left, and I felt like I could stay like that forever.   What I remember most was the elation I felt – like I’d been lit up inside with a feeling of great joy – that, through my own hard slogging, I had seen something wonderful.

An American Bittern was Catherine’s “spark bird.” photo by goingslo

 

 

I think, when I go bird watching, I’m chasing that lit up feeling as much as I’m chasing glimpses of these wonderful creatures.  My Dad will be 80 this year, and we still try to get out bird-watching once a week or so.  Often we just sit in one place, drink coffee, and watch whatever comes by.  It’s a rare outing where we don’t see something avian that gives us that joyful, lit up feeling.

Tom (CT) became hooked at summer camp:

My spark was similar to one of the first posters, who posted about the distant eagle.  I was 12 years old, at a summer camp in New Hampshire. I had been interested in birds since I was 5-6, raptors mostly, like most boys (had a falling out with my best friend for a while over who would win in a fight between a Bald Eagle and a California Condor!), but never really birded. My spark bird was a male Blackburnian Warbler (I’m sure I am not the only one) that a counselor showed me on a nature walk, but it was the fact that you could use binoculars to find and identify this tiny bird so far away that really opened up my world.

That winter, I bought a box of Cap’n Crunch with a pair of binoculars inside as a free prize, then upgraded to another pair of plastic binocs from a drug store, then to my dad’s mother of pearl opera glasses(!) before finally getting as a birthday present, about 80-90 species later, a pair of 8x40s optimized for sports viewing (which I was inordinately proud of because both the 8 and the 40 were bigger numbers than the standard 7×35!). Ironically, like another poster, I’m actually not very good at spotting things with my eyes, and have been a birder mainly by ear for most of my life (though my favorite group of birds are shorebirds–I love sitting and going through a flock with a scope over and over again).

Gerry, the “spark” for this wonderful discussion, tells how sharing a ‘scope can change a life:

It was July of 1970. My wife of two years and I were spending the weekend with my cousin and his wife at their Bonnet Shores house. He asked me if I would like to go birding with him on Sunday morning and not being adverse to trying something new easily agreed.

We went to Moonstone Beach and trudged out by the potato field where my cousin set up his Swift scope. Mind you I didn’t even have a pair of binoculars. He started sweeping the fields and then stopped and fiddled with the focus wheel and said “here take a look at this.”

I put my eye to the scope and what happened next was nothing short of an epiphany. The bird in the scope was  a Killdeer and seeing him was like a laser back to my brain because at very moment I knew what I was going to do the rest of my life.

Gerry gives quiet thanks to his “spark bird” — a Killdeer.     photo by winnu

Today when I find a Killdeer I always linger. It’s not to recreate that moment because that can only happen once but I always view the Killdeer as the key to my great adventure. If you happen to be standing close enough to me you will hear an audible ” thank you” and that comes from my heart and soul.

Jessica notes that she is a “birding baby” compared to many contributors to this thread:

My own story is so different.  Maybe six years ago, on a whim, I got a video about “backyard bird identification” from the library.  At a local park, I made my first identification: a flock of house sparrows.  I watched them hop about, fascinated.  They were no longer just “birds”, beyond any

hope of recognition. They had unique names and identities and habits.  Suddenly birds were everywhere.  I got to know the chickadee, the robin, the blue jay…

A few years later, I imitated a mysterious and lovely (and loud) bird call to my boyfriend.  “That’s a cardinal,” he said without hesitation.  I was stunned (and a little skeptical).  How could he know that from my poor imitation?  He got me “Birding by Ear”, and pretty soon I was helping him make identifications.

I think what got me hooked though was the experience of going to places that seemed empty and just stopping long enough to see that they hosted a rich variety.  If I stand still and pay attention, I might see coots bobbing in the reeds, a heron motionless and hunting, goldfinches calling as they fly, a flock of bluebirds passing through.

Looking forward to reading more about your adventures and finds.

You can read the initial question here and the first batch of answers here.

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When Gerry Cooperman put his “What Sparked Your Interest?  on the MASSBirds listserve, I asked him for permission to post it here.  I figured he’d get a half-dozen responses and perhaps I’d excerpt one or two and move on.  The response has been overwhelming as dozens of birders from across the Northeast tell their story.  Here are a few examples from just the first day of responses.

Paul was in college:

My spark came as a nineteen year old at UMASS. I was told one could see bald eagles at the Quabbin.  I packed my girlfriend in the car one cold winter morning and made the trek down route 9 and arrived at the reservoir expecting there to be an eagle in every tree. How naive I was. It wasn’t until I arrived at the Enfield lookout that I noticed a few older gentlemen with very large homemade telescopes. I built up the nerve to speak to one of them and asked what they were looking at. The answer was something like “that eagle in that tree on Mt. Ram” I looked with my naked eye and saw a mountain. He suggested I look through his scope and that’s when I saw my first adult bald eagle. Amazed by what I saw, I immediately went and purchased the best binoculars and scope that I could afford and decided I wanted more!

Kathleen was a young girl:

 I remember the day very well.  It was in May and I was perhaps 10 or  11.

My sister had come down with scarlet fever.  I was perfectly healthy  but the house was quarantined, so no school for me. It was a lovely warm morning, my window was wide open and I heard birds singing.  Encouraged by an  aunt, I was just beginning to become more seriously interested in birds. I knelt by my open window, looking down at the pear tree in full bloom below,  and suddenly the brightest bird I had ever seen flew into the top of the tree…the brightest red I had ever seen, with black wings and tail.

I knew  robins and crows, blue jays and chickadees, but I had NEVER seen anything like  this. This scarlet red atop a white tree.  I just had to know what it  was.  My aunt had given me her old copy of the little Chester Reed bird book with  black and white drawings.  It look a long time of turning pages,  but eventually I found the bird and immediately took my crayons and colored it in, and decided  to try to see every bird in the book.   I’m still looking, and  marveling, at all the wonderful birds that are out there waiting to be discovered.

David is a birder who began in middle age, decades after he wished he had begun.

 My spark birds were Harlequins at Cathedral Ledge in Rockport in late fall, 2008.  My first-grade son, Tim, had gotten interested in birds via feathered dinosaurs, and my wife and I enrolled him in the Chickadee Birders program at Drumlin Farm.  That Saturday we had gone to the Gloucester Fish Pier, where I figured out how to use binoculars, but when we got to Cathedral Ledge, something had dawned on me:  I had been blind until that day, to birds, that is. Beautiful, glamorous, utterly surprising birds.  I was hooked, and began strolling around our neighborhood in Concord trying to see birds; it turned out I wasn’t all that good at locating them, but I thought that hearing them was almost good enough, so I began concentrating on finding them by ear.

David’s spark birds were Harlequin Ducks. photo by Dendroica cerulea

My son, meantime, has turned to other things, but still remembers his Sibley and asks to see local rarities now and then.  Even if he doesn’t turn into a lifetime birder, he’s given me that gift.

Steve Arena described two spark moments:

The first time was the second week of May, 1970.  I was staring out the window of my first grade class at the Henry Grew School in Hyde Park, Mass.  Like a beacon of light, a bright red bird with all black wings alit atop a weeping willow tree – singing continuously.  True to form, I jumped up, disrupted class, and got the teacher “on the bird”.  Mrs. Ferrara was wonderful.  She stopped the class so that all the kids could see this beautiful bird singing in the clear morning light.  She took it a step further and over the next couple of days, we learned all about birds.  The Scarlet Tanager and Mrs. Ferrara’s encouragement were all I needed.

Scarlet Tanager — the bird that started it all for Steve. photo by Steve Arena

The second time for me was after taking some time off from seriously birding to raise two wonderful children, a Massbird report of two (2) Black Rails at PRNWR entered my inbox.  The birds were found by some hot shot birder I never heard of before (you all know him as Marshall Iliff) and a young man that I last knew as a boy (Jeremiah Trimble).  I ventured up to the Island on 6/21/10 and was treated to the odd yet wonderful sound of two Black Rails calling at dusk.  Zing!  The hook was reset.

Join those who comment on what spark set them on their birding journey?  Tell us about it with a comment below.  You should sign up by RSS feed or via email to have future “spark” articles sent to you.  Thanks