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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Forge
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Published in Forge

A former publication from Medium on personal development. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Ben Gigone
Ben Gigone

Written by Ben Gigone

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