Bird Watching and "Memoirs of a Farm Boy"

On Saturday, I went birding with the Williamsburg Bird Club. Let me say, first of all, that my new binoculars enhanced the experience tremendously. My Eagle Optics Ranger 10 x 50s were a Christmas gift from my husband. (Thank you, dear.) We watched a variety of birds from hawks to songbirds and I learned so much because I could really see the details! The Club records birds seen on 2nd and 4th Saturdays at New Quarter Park on Cornell Lab's eBird site, in case you want to look it up.

We didn't see many ducks on Queens Creek, however, and this was slightly unusual. After birding for awhile, be began to hear gunshots and eventually picked out the duck hunters' boat sitting next to the marsh at the place we call The Point. (In the center and to the right in this photo.) We saw about a dozen decoys anchored around them. Some of the birders grimiced and shook their heads every time we heard a blast. Poor, poor ducks.

On Sunday I read William H. Turner's book Chesapeake Boyhood: Memoirs of a Farm Boy (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf). It had been loaned to me by my cousin Ralph Anderton from Bohannon (Mathews, Virginia). Ralph grew up in that rural way too, and I have heard my birding friend Bill Williams mention a similar attachment to the land rooted in his childhood exploits. As boys, these men hunted and fished because that was what you did. Through hunting and fishing they grew to appreciate wildlife and the natural environment. I highly recommend this book to all who care about Virginia's natural history and Virginian's attachment to it. I hope some of my birding friends will read it so that they may develop greater empathy.

My favorite chapter was "Farm Life:"

"When I was growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, farm life on the subsistence level in Virginia revolved around certain routines ... There was little planning or expectation, but this does not mean to imply any monotony, shortsightedness, or boredom. To the contrary, we lived exciting and wholesome lives...

"One of the biggest jobs we had was pulling weeds and hoeing. No herbicides were ever used, and there were significantly fewer weeds than you have now. Somehow I think that the weeds have become immune to poison ... their immunity is keeping ahead of modern chemistry, and the art of pulling them by hand is lost.

"It was a good, simple, healthy life, enjoyed by young and old. But it is as extinct as the passenger pigeon."