This is a post shared on my Slow Birding Community website and is reposted here for the month of November. Please take a moment to check out what the Slow Birding Community is all about and consider joining as a member to receive all the content found there. Thanks & enjoy!

Friends! I’ll be honest with you, it has not been an easy year. There have been some incredible highs and very steep struggles, some that aren’t over yet and will continue to need attention, vigilance, and compassion. And I’m not even talking about what’s going on in the broader community or even the world, for that matter. It can all feel like a lot, but if I shift my attention to reflect on the good, the kind, the positive, I find there’s also a lot of light all around me.

This week, my family and I spent our holiday break in a House of Covid. Luckily, only one of us had it, and it was mild. The rest of us escaped getting it (so far, so good). But we isolated to protect our elders, who would be at risk if they got it. As hard as it has been not to do all the things for the holiday, my crew really rose to the challenge of spending 24/7 together with some spontaneous crafting and jumping in to help make our meal yesterday extra yummy.

Today, we’ll head to the woods for some much-needed outside time and movement on the land. I’m actually looking forward to the chill of the air getting right into my bones and taking lots of deep breaths to pull in all the scents of late fall.

It’s been a cruel summer. The weather has been punishing both in terms of what we think of as summer in New England and because of the flooding destruction to communities across Vermont and the northeast. We’ve watched Maui go up in flames, watched Japan weather intense flooding, and we’ve seen hurricanes pound coastal communities as the imbalance in our climate and the world’s ecosystems goes tragically awry. Locally, I’ve watched the undoing of our state’s endangered species protections at a small local airport, where we’ve decided to take habitat from the Grasshopper Sparrow, a species on the edge, and convert it to serve our singular needs in the hopes of injecting the local economy. 

The time is now for deep reflection and exacting action. But we need to flip the script that we’ve been using, even as informed conservation-minded citizens of the world. Full disclosure: I’m tired of the same campaigns, messaging, and self-serving approach to bird conservation, climate change, water quality - whatever the environmental cause, our approach and our mindset are tired.

It has been a rough year for weather in Vermont. We endured the late spring frost that damaged trees and apple orchards and now the devasting flooding this week that is likely to surpass the destruction we saw in 2011 with Tropical Storm Irene. With flood warnings still active and more rain on the way, I’m not sure we’ll truly be able to quantify the effect, much less begin the rebuilding any time soon. From the state capital Montpelier to small towns like Cabot and Chester, the impacts have been deep and wide. Farmers will abandon acres upon acres of crops, and Lake Champlain and other waterways will be inundated with all that was washed away - pollutants, plastics, phosphorus, and our sodden family treasures. There’s no such thing as a “hundred-year flood”, we are in a time where we should expect annual flood events moving forward.

This is a post shared on my Slow Birding Community website and is reposted here for the month of June. Please take a moment to check out what the Slow Birding Community is all about and consider joining as a member to receive all the content found there. Thanks & enjoy!

Weeks ago,  I was at the Biggest Week in American Birding in Oregon, Ohio. I had the pleasure of being a speaker and a guide as part of the festival gatherings and I visited the famous Magee Marsh Boardwalk. This is an amazing wetland managed by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. It's also the site of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory. The accessible boardwalk is about 1 mile long, has multiple benches along the way, and spans a shrub-scrub wetland. And during spring migration, it is the place to be - for mainstream birding.

It happened again last week. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt this type of magic synergy. It comes, sometimes, when exploring a place with someone who is deeply familiar with the land and whoever lives there, plants or animals.

I think the first time I was dazzled by this synergy was with Tom Tyning a Massachusetts herpetologist who I had the pleasure of meeting while I was working for Massachusetts Audubon. He was the type of naturalist who had this seemingly magic ability to scan a forest floor or a streambed and point to a log or a rock and gently say, “There. Look there. That looks like a great place for a salamander.”

In the early morning hours before anyone else is awake in my house, I’ve been working my way through a mindfulness course. I light a candle, burn a little incense, and settle into my cozy chair in my sunroom to listen to relax into a guided meditation. One recent morning, as I was listening to the introduction, I let my attention settle on a Mourning Dove in the tree outside my window. The dove was tucked in along a horizontal branch of a towering conifer, taking shelter from the freezing cold. They were plumped up but at the same time compact due to the frigid air. As I closed my eyes for the meditation, I thought of myself like that calm, still, and resilient dove.

When I opened my eyes after the meditation was complete, I was sad to see that the dove was no longer there. A slow scan of my yard revealed a dove sitting alert and actively feeding on the tray feeder. I paused in that blissful post-meditation state and watched the dove in fascination, in awe. Not because they were feeding, but because they were breathing! With each exhale, I could see the dove’s breath condense in the air and swirl away from their head. It brought me back to my breath and gave me a few more minutes of silent contemplation.

Here’s the thing…I was primed for this observation, not only because of the meditation but because of the practice of storytelling.

Here we are at the midpoint between winter and spring, although the weekend forecast here in Vermont is for extreme below zero temperatures, we are at a turning point. From this point on, the days will continue to lengthen and the birds will begin to take their cues from the shifting landscape. These points in the year are opportunities to pause and notice, to take cues from the land, the birds, and ourselves.

I’m just finishing up the last week of this year’s Slow Birding Bird Families Course with a great group of women from all over the country. We’ve been setting the intention over the past few weeks to notice birds through the lens of taxonomy and we’ve used our Usual Suspects as a focal point in to do so. A Usual Suspect is a bird that you have an opportunity to get to know on a daily basis. From there we’ve branched out into understanding their scientific family and their family relations. 

Our weekly discussions are filled with energy and curiosity as we share stories of what we’ve noticed. And each week, I tap into my love of guiding and facilitating, doing my best to empower each learner as an individual and the whole group as a collective, learning from each other. This week, I came away from our discussion almost vibrating because a couple participants had picked up on an invitation to notice that I had mentioned in our previous discussion. They in turn had set the intention to follow that prompt through. Here’s what my invitation was…

As I look back on 2022 and prepare for this next year, one word keeps popping into my head and that is COMMUNITY. My awareness for the community aspect of birding has always been acute, so acute that when I began to feel like I was birding differently than others I had to pause and figure out what that feeling was all about. My Slow Birding practice grew out of this feeling of wanting to belong but recognizing that the way I was enjoying and connecting with birds was not present in the larger birding community at the time.

It took a bit of courage and vulnerability to articulate those feelings and rebuild my birding practice. As I began to share my approach to birding, I found others who were searching for this same sort of belonging as well. So this year I’m really looking forward to focusing on community; on cultivating a community of bird observers who are courageous and vulnerable, curious and kind.

Here’s what professor and author Brené Brown writes about belonging,

“Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

— Brené Brown

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to feel welcomed in the birding community and how we can be better at creating and holding a space where everyone who enjoys noticing birds feels like they belong. I chose the photo at the top of this post because to me it represents how to set the scene for a gathering.

Edges. They can be sharp or precipitous. You may come up on them abruptly or with great care. When pushing past an edge you may feel a rush that is frightening or freeing, you might be floating or falling. Sometimes you may walk right up to the edge and turn around and return from where you came. And sometimes edges are mysterious and enticing; when you can safely and comfortably explore an edge - it can be transforming.

What does this have to do with birding? Well, it has to do with Slow Birding and I’m going to be honest here…some of you pushed me to an edge. And I mean that in a most grateful way! Last week I attended a 9-day immersive course at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health focused on mindful outdoor leadership. I’ve been planning this for about two years after hearing from many of you that the Slow Birding outings and courses you had been attending had elements of mindfulness or even meditation.