The Birdwatcher

I’m not a bird-watcher,

But sometimes I watch birds,

Through a window,

Or down a lane,

Eating the gravel,

Testing the air,

Looking at nothing,

And everything,

The bird that is,

Not me...

 

I’m not a birdwatcher, but sometimes, every now and then, I find myself watching birds.  I’ll just be sitting there, maybe eating a sandwich, or reading a book, or thinking about what to do next, when I’ll catch myself, completely engrossed, watching a little bird; it’s always little birds that I’m watching.  They’re the ones that you see around, testing the air, pecking at concrete.  I don’t know the names of any of them.  I could guess, I may guess finch, or sparrow, but it would always be a guess.  I could never be sure.  But I don’t mind, I don’t care what their names are, that’s not why I watch them.  I watch them because they’re so different to me and all the other people.  They represent an otherness.  There is no opposite to a human, I know that, but I also think that everything is the opposite to humans.  Us humans, we are everything to us, we are all that counts, the whole world revolves around us.  People talk about the environment and endangered species, but I don’t think they really care.  People feel superior.  Everything else is everything else.  Everything else is inferior.  It is for this reason that sometimes, only sometimes, I like to watch birds.  They are, like everything else unhuman, the opposite to me and all the other people, if an opposite ever were to be found.  When I watch them, I feel like I’m getting a look at something that is unusual, even though there are little birds everywhere.  It is only ever little birds that I watch.  I’m watching something that I don’t watch most of the time.  Usually, I watch other people, or something made by other people, like a book, or a computer, or a screwdriver sitting there on the table.  Sometimes I watch grass, and grass is like birds, but it does everything much slower, so I don’t find I get the same insight.  Once I saw grass growing in fast-forward on a TV, and then I got that feeling, except that it was on a TV, which took away from the whole ‘otherness’ experience.  With birds, they’re always there, just hopping about, looking around cautiously, searching for food.  A lot of the time, even most of the time, I’m not sure what they’re doing; it’s these times I like to watch them the most, because then they are complete mysteries to me.  How often is it that one is faced with a complete mystery?  Not every day, I’d say.  Unless, of course, you like to watch little birds.

The other day, I was watching a little bird, I wasn’t sure what he was doing, I was smiling, I was content watching this little bird, who I’m sure I’d seen before, but probably hadn’t.  Anyway, I was sitting on a bench by a road, it was a busy road, and there were many cars driving past, the little bird didn’t seem to mind though.  He didn’t seem to mind, that is, until one of the cars crashed into another.  This crash, it obviously scared him, because he flew away, off somewhere else to be mysterious, maybe for someone else who likes to watch little birds.

The people from the cars started yelling at each other, and I was left sitting there, looking at where my little friend had been just seconds earlier, acting all mysterious and pecking away at who knows what.  There I was, and all I wished was that I too could jump up into the air and fly away.  As it was, all I could muster was to stand up and walk away, my head down, looking for little birds to watch.