Part I: In Search of the Glossy Ibis

One doesn’t set out to become a serious birdwatcher. No one just wakes up one day and thinks to themselves “My gosh, I suddenly have a hankering to tromp all around in ankle-deep muck behind a sketchy industrial waste site because apparently there’s a pond back there and I heard somebody saw a glossy ibis.”

No, that is not a thing that happens; you get lured into it.

Birding is the opiate of nerds.

No one ever intends to get addicted. You just get a little taste somewhere. Then maybe you put up a feeder in your backyard all casual-like.

“I can handle this. I’m not a birder-birder. I’m just a recreational birder. I can stop any time I want…”

And then one day… Well, I’ll be damned, is that a…

“HONEY, WHERE ARE MY BINOCULARS? I THINK THERE’S A BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE AT OUR FEEDER!”

And it IS a black-capped chickadee. Or was. It flies away before you can get your binoculars focused on it. So you go buy better binoculars and then that makes you want to go out actually looking for birds. For no reason. Literally just “Oh, maybe I’ll walk down to the town lake and see if there are any cool birds.”

“Cool birds.” Do you even hear yourself?

And that’s when shit just goes entirely off the Virginia rails (which are medium-sized birds common to freshwater marshes but apparently not the kind located behind seedy industrial waste sites with ankle-deep muck).

So, now you’ve got these new binoculars and a sudden yen to walk down to the town lake and it happens to be a nice day and why not. Off you go; and then you see someone there who also has binoculars. Eventually you end up near each other and get to talking.

You just met your first other birder even though you don’t really think of yourself as a birder; and, invariably, they were nice and friendly and seemed to still be able to hold down a job and maintain personal relationships despite being clearly hooked on the birding high of nerd heroin.

During your quick chat, the other birder invariably mentioned some cool-sounding birds you’ve never even heard of but which they’ve apparently seen around that very same town lake but “over on the other side near the reedy part.”

“Probably want to wear muck boots.” They say and you smile and nod as if you know what muck boots are and had any idea the town lake even had a “reedy part.”

The snowball is now rolling downhill; and it just keeps picking up speed until, the next thing you know, you are a person who not only owns a pair of muck boots but actually got a little giddy when you bought them and now keeps them in your car along with binoculars, bug spray, a rain suit, and, inexplicably, a second rain suit.

(OMG. I love my muck boots. I keep them in my car along with binoculars, bug spray, and two rain suits.)

That’s just how it happens. You get lured into it. And you actually like that.

That’s what happened to me.

I got my first taste 20 years ago while on a safari with friends. If you’ve never been on safari, the basic gist is that you spend the first few days absolutely amazed by the fact that zebras exist and can be observed in the wild. By Day 4 though, you’re like “I get it. Zebras. Lots of zebras. Yup. Got the whole zebras thing.” and then by Day 7, you’re imploring your lovely but unfortunately named guide, Nimrod, to maybe lay on the horn to get the damn zebras out of the road.

Safaris aren’t all lions and water buffalo and cheetahs. Those are fewer and farther between; and while driving around looking for them, you kinda can’t help but notice that Africa has what by any objective measure would be considered “an absolute shitload of cool-ass birds”. Giant prehistoric ones. Ones that look like they could hunt your ass down and talon the absolute shit out of you. Pretty little ones and little pretty ones. Ones that weave adorable little baskets as nests. I mean, the place is just teeming with birds.

Of the four of us on that safari, two of us came home thinking the birds had been pretty cool. Neither of us was a birder. We just each happened to have bought new binoculars for the trip and then came home and thought to ourselves “Maybe I’ll walk down to the town lake or something…”

Fast-forward to fifteen years later and there were the two of us doing some mild trespassing at a closed landfill in the Meadowlands on a bitter winter day because ya never know what kind of winter migrants ya might find at a closed landfill in the Meadowlands in winter. Plus, we heard someone saw a snowy owl there once.

We did not, in fact, see a snowy owl that day - or much of anything - but that is not the point.

The point is, we COULD HAVE seen something.

And that, my friends, is the psychological root at the heart of falling into a debilitating birding habit.

A variable reward schedule.

It’s straight classical conditioning B.F. Skinner-style.

If you give a rat a food pellet every time it presses a lever, once pressing the lever stops producing a pellet, the rat will give up pretty quickly. The lever worked and then didn’t. The rat shrugs and is like “Oh well. Guess the lever doesn’t work anymore.” and calls it a day.

When pressing the lever some random number of times occasionally produces a pellet though, that damn rat will hammer that lever like it was a lobby elevator button and they’re late for a meeting, pellet or no… because even though it didn’t worked any of the prior fifty times, the next press might be the one!

That’s a variable reward schedule. You never know when you’re gonna get that next pellet. And that is birding. You never know when you’re going to see something interesting or different or cool… but if you keep pressing the lever, occasionally, you will. And that makes it even more rewarding when you do.

Seeing something rare or different feels good. It just does.

Last winter, I saw a bird that was literally the only one of its kind in the wild on the entire continent of North America. A particular kind of eagle indigenous to northeast Asia. It apparently got hella lost at some point and just flew straight across the Bering Sea and over Alaska (where it may or may not have been able to see Sarah Palin’s house).

For two years since, that one wayward Steller’s sea eagle has just been wandering around North America like a drunken tourist who can’t find their friends or their hostel in Sevilla after drinking way too much sherry at some flamenco place and then leaving with a group of equally drunk locals because they were kinda into the one named Pilar.

[I found my friends eventually. It was fine.]

Now, wherever that eagle pops up, it makes news. Birders swarm to the area to try to find it. Some who see it then post about it on a popular birding app… and then others see that report and click on it and get literally the exact coordinates where it was spotted.

And that’s how I saw the Steller’s. I was on my way to Maine to see my friends, Tuesdi and Michael, and learn how to curl. Checked the birding app at a rest stop. The eagle had been seen an hour before only a little distance of my route. Drove to the exact spot. Saw a crowd with binoculars. Asked if the eagle was there. They pointed it out. I took a couple pictures and that was that.

Literally, the rarest bird in North America. A fifteen-minute detour thanks to an app and a crowd. And that’s actually not great but we’ll get to that… and we’re getting to the glossy ibis, I swear. Stay with me.

Part II to follow shortly.