by Susan Fox Rogers
Cornell University Press, 2022
At the age of 49, Susan Fox Rogers had reached an inflection point in life, single and with no children, both parents recently passed away, and immersed in a happy teaching and writing career at Bard College, where she found herself “loving and mentoring my students as if they might be my own kids.” Sitting with some of these students on a warm spring evening, the otherworldly call of a veery set her on a course to become a birder, the first three years of which she details in Learning the Birds. Through a series of beautifully written essays, Rogers explores how she embraced the birding lifestyle and identity, finding a world of richness beneath the surface of her previous experience.
She let birds guide her on early morning walks and dark drives through New York’s Hudson Valley, tussocky peatlands in Alaska’s tundra, the gray streets of Paris in December, and the sunny roads of Arizona, among other places. Rogers’ skillful writing brings her story beyond a technical recounting or a dry travelogue, pulling the reader along in anticipation of her thoughtful, personal, and sometimes quite vulnerable insights, her astute and compassionate descriptions of other people on the birding journey with her, and her clear-eyed commentary on some of the troubling historical and cultural aspects of birding. She writes, “At the heart of most essays rests a journey whether physical, spiritual, or emotional. My story with the birds is all three.”
Learning the Birds is organized in roughly chronological order, with each chapter centering around a particular birding experience, such as hearing three saw-whet owls during the Christmas Bird Count or driving 2½ hours to see a fork-tailed flycatcher that had anomalously landed on the Connecticut coast. She enthusiastically joins a local birding club, falls in love with one of the group’s expert members, and puts aside writing on weekends so she can immerse herself in birds.
Rogers retains a wry self-awareness that lets her provide commentary on the unique and specific human subculture in which she now finds herself. She gently critiques fellow birders marooned behind giant camera lenses or trapped in self-imposed and rigid cycles of list-making and list-keeping. She imagines the perspectives of individual birds she observes, wondering about their experiences and comprehension of the human viewers arrayed behind lenses nearby. Achieving a subcultural victory – #1 Birder in Dutchess County on the citizen science app eBird – she proudly calls her sister in Paris, laughing as her sister asks if she is OK.
Rogers also dives into the past, contemplating historic figures, particularly women, who influenced modern birding. These include early-20th-century ornithologist Florence Merriam Bailey, who popularized the observation of bird behavior; before her, most birders learned birds only after the feathered creatures were shot and prepared as specimens. These reflections touch on the complicated gender dynamics of birding, both historical and modern. Learning the Birds also includes digressions on the birding lives of figures including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and convicted murderer Nathan Leopold, and wonderings at how birding experiences shape a person and their decisions.
Like any conservation-minded birder, Rogers mourns the lack of bird abundance in our modern era. Her joy of birding is tempered by a concern and sadness about many species’ decline. Enthusiasm about birds has resulted in both catastrophe and progress – love of birds’ beauty decimated some species during the age of feather hats, but also spurred the modern conservation movement.
Birding allows Rogers to learn deeply just by stepping outside her door and beyond well-established channels in her life that could become ruts during midlife if not well tended. She navigates new friendships, romantic relationships, communities, and expectations, guided by the complex dynamics of feathered, singing creatures that operate outside of all those realms. Her book is a richly detailed, absorbing, and readable account that will leave readers with much to consider.