Irregular Books

The defining line from How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher, by Simon Barnes: “Looking at birds is a key: it opens doors, and if you choose to go through them you find you enjoy life more and understand life better.”

As I read it, How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher isn’t really about birdwatching particularly, but about the practice of watching in general, as considered through the specific case of people who enjoy watching birds. It’s a meditation on the philosophy of knowledge - not the end of having it so much as the process of gathering it.

Another reflection of the idea is that the word auspicious, which is now generally meant to refer to something suggesting positive or remarkable fortune, originally comes from the Latin term for divination through the observation of birds. That’s something that’s done worldwide - by the native people’s of Alaska, who watch Raven for signals of secret knowledge.

Not knowing is as great as mastery, in the open attitude exhibited by Barnes. Fanatical birdwatchers will try to prove their worth by their exhaustive knowledge of birds, but Barnes is as eager in excitement at seeing a bird previously unknown.

In the birds themselves, but even more in our posture of watching them, we come to understand ourselves. That makes How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher worth reading even for people who couldn’t care less about birds.