hot bird summer

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with birds.

Not in a casual, charming way. Not in a “sometimes I put out seed” way. No. I’m in deep. I point and name species like I’m hosting a low-budget but high-emotion PBS documentary.

I have binoculars. I own field guides. Plural. I’ve said the phrase “breeding season” aloud in public.

And when I’m out walking my dog, I stop — frequently, dramatically — to squint at branches and power lines like I’m about to deliver a prophecy.

This does not thrill my dog. She’ll be mid-sniff at a fire hydrant when I freeze, whispering “common grackle” to no one. She looks back like I’ve lost the plot. I probably have. But there’s a red-bellied woodpecker in the sycamore, and I need a moment.

This started quietly, as most new obsessions do. A glance upward here, a “look at all the robins!” there. Next thing I knew, I was comparing compact birding scopes at midnight and saying things like, “That’s not just a hawk, that’s a Cooper’s.” Like it’s just something I’ve always known.

I have become that person. And I’m not sorry.

Because last week, I watched a tiny yellow warbler – smaller than my fist – cling to a branch swaying in the wind. It could have been anywhere else. Safe. Sheltered. Instead, it rode that branch like a daredevil, completely unbothered, occasionally tilting its head to sing.

The audacity floored me.

Birds are magical.

These mostly diminutive, sometimes furious little creatures just take off. No big deal. They soar and dive and hover and vanish, and I’m left staring at the sky like I’ve seen God.

Some are loud and messy. Some are shy. Some fly in pairs. Some scream into the void. Relatable, honestly.

But they all move through the world with this mix of chaos and grace. Even the city birds — the pigeons, the starlings, the scrappy little house sparrows — act like they belong everywhere. Like, I am supposed to be here. You figure it out.

And maybe that’s what gets me.
The independence. The defiance. The refusal to be subtle.

There’s something holy about it.

This whole bird thing started with me feeling weird, maybe a little unhinged. I was like: Who am I now? Why am I carrying binoculars and shouting “catbird!” like it’s a warning?

But dammit, there’s something freeing about marveling at the things I used to overlook. About walking through the same neighborhood and seeing an entirely new dimension of life overhead — shrieking, nesting, surviving.

Also, let’s be clear: I may be a birder now, but I’m still a dumbass.

The other day, I called my dad — called him — to ask why an entire parking garage was full of fake owls. Dozens of them.

“You’re kidding me,” he said, then explained, laughing, that owls are bird royalty. Apex predators. Everyone else hates them. Even fake ones scare other birds away.

This is apparently common knowledge. But I haven’t gotten to that chapter yet.

Standing in that parking garage, surrounded by plastic owls, I felt as though I’d been let in on some cosmic joke. Here I was, thinking I’d discovered some peculiar owl convention, when really I was just seeing the world’s most basic bird deterrent system.

It was humbling. But also exactly the point. This whole thing didn’t start because I knew what I was doing. It started because I was tired of rushing past wonder.

And birds, despite my best efforts to categorize and understand them, refuse to be reduced. They won’t let me ignore the mystery.

So yes. I stop mid-walk to purr “titmouse.” I gasp audibly at the flash of a red cardinal. I get it wrong. I learn something new. I do it again.

And my dog has accepted that walks now include interpretive pauses. She’s learned to wait (almost) while I crane my neck at seemingly empty trees, trusting that I’ll eventually remember she exists.

Maybe I have lost it. But maybe I’ve found something too. A reason to look up. A new way of moving through the world. A reminder that even in suburban parking lots, there are layers of life unfolding I never used to notice.

Because it turns out that nothing calms my nervous system quite like the call of mourning doves. That low, breathy hoot — part sigh, part lullaby — hits some deep internal tuning fork. Every time I hear it, I exhale without realizing I’d been holding everything tight.

I’m different now. Slower. More interrupted.

It’s a bird girl summer.
Let me have this.
Let me keep watching.

If you made it this far, click that itty-bitty digital organ! ❤️