How I Became a Birdwoman

A condensed account of adolescense as it pertains to birds

I am fourteen years old and doing lawncare on a stranger's property to make money for a church trip. I have no lawncare experience. I enter the barn and a swarm of birds swoops at my head. I call for help, but no one comes. I grab a pitchfork and swing it around, fending my way out of the harrowing scenario.

From this point forward, my relationship with birds was fraught. I witnessed a bird poop on my childhood best friend's hand. When I told my mom, she recounted her own tale of getting dumped on from above. Every time a bird flew over my head, I flinched. On numerous occasions, I broke into a full-on sprint to escape from birds swooping in my general vicinity.

I grew up in a city known as The City of Five Smells for it's five polluting factories. My childhood experiences with nature were few and far between. Probably the whole reason that I am writing this blog post today is that I was an indoor kid.

As a teenager, when I had my own car and the freedom to explore, my relationship with nature began to shift. Nature was a welcome escape from my stressful home life. No one was expecting anything of me. I could just be.

Now that I learned to love nature

When I moved to the Iowa City area in 2015, the most exciting part was getting to visit all of the parks for the first time. One of the stops on my journey to get to know the natural areas was the Iowa Raptor Project at Lake Macbride. I looked in the eyes of a barred owl named Cypress and I felt like I was connecting to a soul with deep and unknowable wisdom. I returned to visit him every year until one day, he was gone.

A new barred owl has since taken up residence at the raptor center. He's a baby, and is cool in his own way. If you circle your finger around like you're casting a spell, he will follow it with his head and make little clacks with his beak.

In 2021, I took a birding workshop at Public Space One called We Know Who You Are By What You Say, led by artist and conservationist, Ashlee Mays. Contrary to the title, no one got to know me because I don't think I spoke a word to another person during the duration of the class. Despite my social anxiety, I showed up and I learned things.

This short excursion taught me to listen in a new way. I was amazed that the instructor and some of the other people in the group could hear a birdsong, identify the species of bird, and even in some cases know what the bird was trying to communicate. I downloaded the app, Merlin, a bird identification app that can listen to a bird song and suggests the most likely species.

I used the app off and on over the next few years, but found that I couldn't retain the information. I have always had difficulty with recalling hard facts. I don't remember the plot of almost any movie I've ever seen. I can't name the characters in a book I read a month ago. My brain is very good at learning processes (e.g. how to use every tool in Adobe Illustrator) but names, dates, locations - no chance.

So I kind of gave up. I'd still attempt here and there, but felt like learning to identify more than a few very common birds just wasn't an option for me. However, birds would continue to find their way into my life.

In 2023, I started playing a Dungeons & Dragons character that was a wereraven. Like a werewolf, but bird edition. I made a halloween costume about it.

Then, in 2024, I heard about a project called Disappearing Birds, an exhibition organized by Jen Delos Reyes that involved over 300 artists who made work about species at risk of extinction. I signed up to draw a sharp-tailed grouse, mostly at random.

Fast forward to 2025. Birds took over my life.

I started reading a book called The Genius of Birds. As a non-science brained person, it is a bit of a slog. As of writing this post, I still haven't finished it.

Secret: I can't turn the wi-fi on on my Kindle or the library will take the book back.

Randomly, about a month ago, I watched a YouTube documentary called LISTERS: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. The people in the documentary were doing something called a Big Year, which is traveling around and identifying as many birds as you can. It's competitive. They logged the birds they found in Merlin's companion app, eBird. There's a list of top birders. It's like Pokémon in real life, only without the part where you trap the animal in a mysterious void and only bring it out to fight. For you gen-Xers and above, there's this thing called pokéballs. Nevermind, I won't get into it.

I decided I wanted to try again at learning birds. I also realized that I can still identify a sharp-tailed grouse after doing that art piece a year ago. Why? Because I took the time to draw it. Drawing forces you to spend time actively paying attention and to notice the tiny details.

So I started drawing birds. And then I bought a vintage zoom lens at an estate sale. And now I am either drawing or photographing birds as many days out of the week as I can squeeze in. No formal challenge, no numerical goals, just slowly and steadily learning about birds.

Are birds exceptionally fascinating to me?

Honestly, no. I still find it a little difficult to fully connect with them, aside from Cypress, who may have been God in bird form. Other birds are scary little dinosaurs. But I do have a deep desire to feel more in tune with the natural world, and knowing my avian neighbors by name feels like a step in the right direction.

I don't plan to travel the world searching for rare birds or make any contributions to science. But I do intend to learn the birds I might see in my own backyard and how to support them.

Here are some drawings of birds. I am going to make postcards to send to my friends.

I had an idea while writing this about making a membership tier of like $5/month where I send a monthly bird postcard to anyone - friend or foe. I can't decide if this is a good idea or if it contaminates the process and will eventually allow capitalism to suck the fun out of learning about birds. This is also a newsletter platform, so I have no idea how I would logistically go about setting up a snail mail membership. Not that there are so many of you clamoring for it that a spreadsheet wouldn't suffice. I guess if you're into the idea, let me know!