How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher

Before reading this book when anyone asked if I’m a birdwatcher, I said no. While reading it, however, I discovered I’m actually a bad birdwatcher. This realization produced a double bind because a bad birdwatcher, according to author Simon Barnes, is really a good birdwatcher—that is, someone who enjoys watching and listening to birds but does it without frantically searching for names in bird guides and without taking field notes.

I’d probably not have read a book about birdwatching with a wussy title like How to Be a Good Birdwatcher, but a book urging BAD birdwatching is another story. For the first 100 to 150 pages, I interrupted the reading only with reluctance. The final 50 to 100 pages were often repetitive and boring, but in the end every page was essential preparation for the book’s four final emotional pages.

All in all How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher (2005) is a good read. It revved my youthful interest in ogling birds and other animals, then devouring books now called masterpieces of natural history such as Osa Johnson’s I Married Adventure (1940), Rachel Carson’s best book by a nautical mile The Sea around Us (1951), J. A. Hunter’s Hunter (1952), Thomas Helm’s Shark (1961), and Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf (1963). All of these outdoor classics are still available to borrow through your public library or to purchase through bookfinder.com.

So I’m grateful to Simon Barnes, a globe-trotting sportswriter for The Times of London, for writing this intro to birdwatching. He eschews the faddish term birding apparently because there is no birding without birdwatching. Some of his countrymen, however, award the book, which has no illustrations, just two stars, as evidenced by the following excerpts from reviews posted to Amazon.co.uk:

“Beautifully written. Part autobiography, part philosophy, part user manual, part call to arms. . . .”

“How to be a bad author. This is one of the most annoying books I have ever started to read—I packed it in about halfway through. A litmus test for hobbyist authors is ‘Would you want to join this person in the activity that is written about?’ In this case, how would you like to go birding with Barnes? Answer—not at all.”

“How to be a bad author. Actually, the book isn’t that bad. It’s just that Barnes has this awful patronising style that makes me want to punch him. The subject matter is quite interesting, though I’d have appreciated more about birds and less about Barnes.”

“If you are hesitating about buying this book—don’t! This is a life-enriching book. . . . If you are already interested in birds it will open doors and overcome hurdles. . . . If you don’t feel you are at all interested in birds this book may change all that.”

“Feathered Fun. Simon Barnes’s enthusiasm . . . is highly infectious, whether or not you have ever wanted to, or even thought about, birdwatching. It is more about taking pleasure from, and wondering about, the living world around us than a guide to any specific birds. . . . Its style is conversational and witty, observant and full of insight. . . . It raises one’s awareness of the mystery of nature and rejoices in it. . . . No prior knowledge of the avian world is needed to derive intense enjoyment from this magically humourous little book.”

Oldie but Goodie

Here’s my experience of two books about cats—one new but dull, the other one old but lively.

Cats 24/7: Extraordinary Photographs of Wonderful Cats was “created,” the book brags, by Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen. It was published in 2005 by Chronicle Books and sold for $24.95.

A special page says “this project was made possible through the generosity of the following companies: Purina, Webshots, Lexar, Adobe, Mirra, Google, jetBlue Airways, and eBay.” These names were not printed in book type; rather, company logotypes were used, a narcissistic indulgence that added plenty to the cost but nothing to the quality.

Michael Capuzzo wrote the introduction and, amazingly, called it “The Littlest Lion,” which is so prosaic, it merits no further comment. The rest of his piece never gets beyond stringing together additional clichés such as the following:

“The family cat [is] the contented icon of the sunny household.” That line will cloud the day of any intelligent reader. “Worshipped by the Egyptians some 3,000 years ago, the cat/god cult was so powerful that if a man killed a cat, he was sentenced to death.” Only a Martian is unfamiliar with that stale fact. Nor does Capuzzo fail to include the most stultifying stereotype of all: Women love cats and men hate them.

The photographs in this book, which runs 192 pages and measures an unwieldly 9.25 by 11.5 inches, are lavishly printed in color on heavy stock. After all, the companies that sponsored the project have very deep pockets. But the photographs are pretentious, repetitious, and boring. The cats pictured all have the same deadpan expression and lack of personality on their empty faces.

When I worked in publishing, professional photographers said “all photographs of cats are crap” and no self-respecting publisher would buy them. In the sixties and seventies, we did not anticipate high tech companies run by computer geeks ignorant of books but with zillions of dollars to fling at self-indulgent projects.

The other book about cats—the good one—I found in my mother-in-law’s bookcase. Elizabeth loves cats and, besides living with cats (no one “owns” them), collects catstuff and books about them, including “The Poetry of Cats,” which I recommend highly.

Originally published in 1974 and edited by Samuel Carr, this 96-page oldie (ISBN 1-85152-047-3) collects some of the best poems and illustrations ever created about these treasured friends and sells even today for less than $10 from used-book outlets.

More than 50 poems are included by great writers, including T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, John Keats, Edward Lear, A. L. Rowse, Christopher Smart, Stevie Smith, William Wordsworth, W. B. Yeats, and others.

The book also reproduces scores of drawings and paintings by famous artists and illustrators such as Caldicott, Cruikshank, Hogarth, Lear, Manet, Picasso, and Renoir. Unlike the cats in the first book, the cats pictured here reflect many feline moods: comic, aristocratic, lazy, cunning, fierce, inscrutable.

The book’s illustrations evoke a range of personalities and moods precisely because they are NOT photographs. They, like the poems, are the creations of talented men and women who loved cats, understood them, and were able to render special fleeting moments, feelings, and interactions in one-of-a-kind illustrations. This creativity was identified and separated from the usual trash published about cats and then organized into a neat little book through the developed taste, sensibility, and creativity of the book’s editor, Samuel Carr.

Why don’t we see more high-quality books—as well as films and TV programs—from the major media? Because consumers appear to prefer the latest genre fiction, loaded with mechanical sex and violence. There’s so little demand for excellence, there’s no money in reproducing it. So media giants no longer value creativity and no longer seek it out. Worst of all, they may no longer even recognize it when they do see it.