Something shifts in the St. Louis spring. The cardinals that have been here all winter are joined by robins, ready to build nests in the corners of your porch. Many other kinds of birds pass through on their way north to their breeding grounds.
Especially in the spring, birds are visible and common – you see and hear them everywhere. Their songs surround us when we’re out for a dog walk. They can fly, which is fundamentally interesting because we cannot. Most importantly, they are a window into ecosystems, seasons, and different patterns of life quietly running around our own.
One book that makes these ideas clear is Slow Birding by Joan Strassman, a professor of biology at Washington University, whose research was not on birds, but on social interactions of wasps and even smaller creatures, like amoeba. Strassman had long used bird watching as an activity to help biology students observe social behavior and develop scientific thinking. This passion for using bird observation to help others understand the social nature of animals first became a blog, and later this book.
Strassman’s main idea is that watching birds is a great activity for exploring the natural world close to your home, so Slow Birding focuses on common bird species and common bird behavior you can see in your backyard, in your neighborhood, or in nearby places, like Forest Park.
The idea is that the process of slow birding is like slow food; focus should be on the local over the exotic, on the quality of observation over quantity, on the mindfulness of watching and listening to gain birds’ daily lives, and on an appreciation of the common birds that are often overlooked in favor of the exotic. In fact, Strassman describes a good bird walk as “very vanilla.” She walks with her dog in her neighborhood, and watches for the birds that are her favorites — blue jays, robins, and wrens are among them — and stops to watch their behavior. But local parks, like Lucier or Forest Park, are just as good in her mind, and she celebrates those places in St. Louis where you can stop and watch, long enough to notice the interesting behavior habits of birds.
The book offers scientific insight into the behavior of 16 common and easily recognizable bird species. These species, according to Strassman, are “the bread and butter” of observing social behavior. You can learn how robins locate worms or why starlings murmurate – flock in those massive, synchronized flights – and many other interesting aspects of these species. Much of this clearly presented information is scientific research from field observations. The book also has suggestions of things you can do to develop your understanding of one of these common species and develop your scientific thinking along the way – how you can easily research on your walks.
Strassman’s Slow Birding, and the methods and information it contains, encourage a deeper connection to the environment. Just like the slow food movement connects people to land and farmers, slow birding incubates a connection to local ecosystems. And just like slow birding will reward the patient observer, the book rewards the reader with information and strategies to deepen knowledge of social behavior in birds. So get a copy at your local bookstore or library, but even more importantly, get outside and watch the birds.
