Guest Blog by Nick Thomas
Heron Photo Credit Nick Thomas
Birds show up. They put one wing in front of the other, they get up early, they do their best to make sure their young are fed and protected, they show courage, they never back out of their obligations.
Their lives are simple. Basic survival. Not for them any thoughts about the minutiae and striving of human life – which college our children will get into, whether we will get that apparently well deserved promotion at work, if we might get a second date with that person we just met online. Unlike us, they don’t live through extended periods of unhappiness or happiness, however we define those.
And they have no concept of the external events we all live through. Crushing global pandemics and political and societal strife, so extraordinarily ever present already for us in the 21st century, are absent and irrelevant to them.
So, yes, we have a lot to learn from birds. About showing up, about focusing on what is truly important, about how we need to keep things more simple. And maybe particularly so during times in our lives when it is really very difficult to put one foot, let alone a figurative wing, in front of the other, as it has definitely been in different ways for so many of us in the past year.
Once Nerdy Teenager Rediscovers Love of Birds on Canal
I’ve been interested in birds and birdwatching since I was a nerdy teenager growing up in the U.K. I didn’t seem to enjoy things that other boys of my age seemed to, like the boy scouts. I loved playing cricket, but it wasn’t much fun for my sister or me to play that sport with each other when one was so eager to do so and the other one not so much.
It might have been after another refusal by my long-suffering sister to come and play cricket in the back garden with me that maybe I noticed my first robin or finch at the bird feeder. But it was definitely a family vacation to the isle of Islay in western Scotland – the island where they make all that fabulous peat-infused whisky you can find in your local liquor store – that my interest in birds, and mainly checking the different species off on my list, went stratospheric. So many different and new species to record – terns, shearwaters, gannets, guillemots, razorbills – and that was just on the ferry from Scotland’s mainland to Islay alone. Magical.
Fast forward multiple years to June of last year, having now lived in Denver for 18 years or so, and I found myself in a very dark wood metaphorically. To help me eventually emerge from it, I started to take daily walks along what would become very familiar stretches of the High Line Canal. And now I was armed with a camera to take bird pictures.
Birds and Routine, and a Good Camera, Bring Comfort
Cedar Waxwing Credit Nick Thomas
At the time of our latest disease outbreak, of political exhaustion both in the U.S and around the world, I was going through my own period of deep personal unhappiness. Like so many, I lost my job due to the coronavirus and, at the same time, I went through the savage break-up of a seven-year relationship, the most significant one of my life.
Largely confined to my own small apartment, and to my own misery, there has so very often seemed no obvious way through such a dark wood.
But necessity truly is the mother of invention. Many things have materialized as a result of all this turmoil and these things will be expanded upon in the words that follow. For now, though, I just want to say that, buying a decent camera to take my long-established interest in birds to another level, may be about the most significant step I’ve taken to very slowly emerge from my pain.
During the pandemic, so many people have discussed finding new hobbies. How many are now experts at making sourdough bread? Perhaps they have taken up a new instrument. For me, however, everything seemed too much of a struggle to devote time to; I couldn’t find the enthusiasm needed. Just about the only thing I did become pretty good at was finally learning how to make a decent omelet.
But, buying the camera, and taking it with me on my daily walk, slowly started to give me solace as I worked through the extreme discomfort in my head and heart. It didn’t require a lot of effort, just showing up every day to walk and take pictures. Walking was about the only exercise I could regularly do, running seemed too hard. And the birds were always there to accompany me. Nature was there all around, a short seven minute drive from my apartment overlooking the highway in Denver.
55 species in Nine Months of Walking
Some mornings back in the spring and summer the birds were quiet; others, there was a burst of activity. And the species varied day to day. There were some pretty much ever presents – Great Blue Herons, Mallards, Snowy Egrets, Magpies, Western Kingbirds, and majestic Swainson’s Hawks to name a few. And then there were birds I maybe only ever saw once or very few times – a Bullock’s Oriole, a Killdeer family protecting its chick, Gray Catbirds, Townsend Solitaires, and an Eastern Kingbird (out here in Colorado) spring to mind.
And, when it came to the fall and winter turning into 2021, the birds changed again. Cedar Waxwings, huge flocks of loud American Robins, White and Red-breasted Nuthatches, winter ducks on the various ponds. More recently, as signs grew of increasing bird activity before the big chill that settled mid-February, Red-winged Blackbirds, common but still one of my favorites.
55 species to date, on very limited stretches of the 70+ mile long Canal, and lots of pictures.
Through the pictures, through the birds, through the daily walks on the High Line, it has been a glacially slow move towards finding acceptance of my experiences in the past several months.
Bald Eagle Flyover
I’m not sure there ever was a specific turning point in such a slow healing process but I do remember so clearly when a Bald Eagle flew over me on the stretch of the Canal by Belleview sometime in January. That felt a very happy moment for me.
Full disclosure: Yes, I am a white, privileged 50 something male who hasn’t been evicted from my home during the pandemic and who is able to travel less than a mile down the road to a Whole Foods store to do a weekly shop to buy the eggs for my now supersmooth omelets. And I was able to find some money to invest in the camera, not a really expensive one but still at a price tag that may be out of reach for many, especially during these times of economic hardship.
But I hope my story has a universal truth, or truths. It is my hope that large majorities of people can relate to unforeseen job losses, and personal struggle, and certainly to heartbreak, surely one of the most universal life experiences whatever your culture, nationality, ethnic group, age, gender, or economic status. And maybe you can also relate to the beauty of birds, the lessons they can teach us.
I do not pretend to be a bird photographer like the really good ones I admire and follow on Instagram, I am no expert at all and am just beginning on my journey. And then there are words to accompany the photos. I am more comfortable with those and I do consider myself somewhat of an expert when it comes to heartbreak.
I hope the combination of all of this will strike a chord with you and give you some solace too, whatever pain you are facing in your own lives. Nature, what I have experienced on these lovely canal trails, has certainly helped me.
Nick Thomas is a U.K. native who loves birds, red wine, cricket, and his children (not necessarily in that order). His bird pictures can be found on Instagram @nthomas459.
