How Birding Became a Go-To Quarantine Hobby

Becoming a birder taught me the art of seeing what I’m looking at

Ben Gigone
Forge

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Photo by John Duncan on Unsplash

You know that feeling you get when you say a word over and over until it becomes so strange you can’t help but laugh? That’s how I feel about birds.

The idea of brightly colored singing machines whizzing through the air, gathering on telephone wires, and collectively vacationing during winter is absolutely preposterous. We as a species are definitely too chill about the fact that there are birds that can literally speak English. I remember seeing a parrot talking with its handler on a recent vacation and thinking to myself, “That’s neat.” Looking back at this interaction now, I’ve concluded that witnessing a speaking animal obviously blew my mind so much, that my brain could do nothing but minimize the experience to a novelty. But, I digress.

Actually, no. I don’t digress.

Watch this right now.

After seeing this, I had to lie down for a cool 30 and stare at the ceiling to decompress. Anyway.

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Ben Gigone
Forge
Writer for

MSc Aerospace Engineering. Heavily into things for brief periods of time. Avid watch collector, just super bad at it.