When the majestic Cascades summer hiking season is over, I felt like I was hitting a dip in the road with more frigid air coming in, and an increasingly longer desk time coding at home. I’ve long heard about the autumn migratory birds from Alaska passing through our beautiful Pacific Northwest on their way to the south. Wanting to sustain my close relationship with nature, I decided to join the Skagit Audubon Society for a birding trip in the fertile Skagit estuaries. Before I went, I was a bit put off by the assumption that it would be very cold (8am next to water) due to the static nature of standing most of time. But the excitement of seeing so many new species, walking along the dike and soaking up all the knowledge our trip leader was eagar to pass on, made it both a thrilling experience for the eyes and the mind.
For me, birding is a great training ground for my patience. I am very action-biased and thrive in doing things and making changes to achieve my goals. But in birding, nature is the boss. Even when eBird tells you someone saw 25 species yesterday in place X, you might only be able to glimpse at 1 today. Nothing is certain and there is nothing you can do to invite more birdy friends to party! Gradually, I become more accepting of what’s on the plate and savor it regardless.
In addition to shaping my character, birding also fulfils my desires in technical pursuit, connecting with nature and engaging with different people.
Technical
The scientific birding world has a structure and taxonomy that is foreign to me. In fact, I was so confused by the Sibley (and other) field guides at first. Why does bird A appear before B? And how do they group birds together? It was only after reading several beginner’s books (among them, the National Geographic book by Noah Stryker provides excellent orientation and handholding) did it make sense to me - it has to do with evolutionary order. Gradually, I began to gain an appreciation of the taxonomy and notice a parallel with the ryokan problem I attempted to solve with my Find My Ryokan project - a similar classification/clustering problem space in which one needs to extract common attributes from many entities, and using multimodal models to group and recommend similar ryokans. Drawing a parallel with existing technical problems in another field gives me additional enjoyment in the new hobby!
In fact, I often want to learn more about the background architecture of Merlin’s sound and image ID features. Since I’ve used a visual transformer (CLIP model) previously in ryokan classification, I am recently reading up on the CLIP vs PEEB discussion to improve bird classification using a new method. And the open source libraries from BirdNET also opens the door for birders who are also developers to customize their own solutions. Look at this list of exciting projects!
Nature
I have been an avid hiker, skier, snowshoer and mountain biker for years. An underlying theme is that these activities are all cardio-based and speed is one of the major factors that draw me in. Taking up birding offers me another perspective in nature, as the slower pace makes me more aware of the blessing of coexisting with so many different species in our precious planet. I am so grateful to each of our avian friends for enriching my life with all their brilliant colors and unique songs. They allow me to form a stronger bond with nature, regardless of season.
When the summer hiking season was over, I tended to cuddle at home and exchange cardio time with desk time. Birding forces me out of winter retreat, soaking in more morning sunshine and fresh air, which is beneficial for health.
People
Last but not least, birding offers me the opportunity to meet with many different people in outings, or a chance encounter in a hotspot. Many birders are very friendly and never hold back on the best place/way to see something interesting nearby. Some of the more experienced birders have a contagious passion and their energetic temperament strengthens my resolve to get up at 6am to enjoy a quiet time with our avian friends. Their deep wisdom gained from a lifelong pursuit of the hobby also taught me new ways in seeing things.
I am so happy to find a new hobby to deepen my connection with nature and people. I hope that as my sightings increase, I will be able to share what I learnt as a newbie with others who are also extending their adventures from their backyard feeders!