Miss Hathaway Rides Again!

Every bird lover winces at the thought of Miss Jane Hathaway (depicted at left). She was shrill, silly, and unlovable. Sometimes she wore a pith helmet. She was a birdwatcher, and not just any birdwatcher. Miss Hathaway was—and in certain ways still very much is—the very essence, the perfect caricature, of the birdwatcher.

’scuze me?

No, no. Of course not. We modern birders are nothing like Miss Hathway. Note: birders. Not “birdwatchers.” Puh-leeze. Big difference. More than 40 years ago, we discarded that effete label. We are birders, hip and cool (see right). We bird. We go birding. Birding is a sport, practically. It’s fast-paced. It’s competitive. Midnight-to-midnight, chasing and twitching, Big Days and Big Years, chest thumps and high fives—now that’s birding.

Then again, you hear a fair bit of grumbling these days about that approach to bird appreciation. The competitiveness, the carbon-spewing Big Years, the list envy…those things are offputting to many. A new approach is called for. What, then, is this new approach to bird appreciation? And who, then, are the next generation of bird lovers?

I believe that, in a certain sense, the pendulum has swung back to yesteryear. What used to be known as birdwatching is reascendant. And guess what…

She’s baa-ack.

That’s right. Miss Hathaway is alive and well. “She is me.” She’s a whole lot of us, I believe. Let me explain.

First things first. Let’s ditch the unhelpful stereotypes—the fifties-era spinster birdwatchers, the twentysomething cool dude birders of the 1970s and 1980s. Let’s instead focus on the recreation itself: birdwatching in the 1950s vs. the modern birding movement that was well under way by the early 1970s.

I’ll paint with a very broad brush. Modern birding, I would say, is all about the lure of the list and thrill of the chase. In its purest form, birding is possessed of an undeniable maleness. Birders are on the go, racing from one rare bird to the next. Gotta get the bird for your county list, gotta get 700 for the ABA area. Oh, and one other thing: Along the way, you’d better learn a lot—a whole lot—about bird identification. Today’s birders can identify warblers by their nocturnal flight calls; third-cycle gulls by the patterns of their remiges; empids by jizz alone. You get the picture.

Right away, we have a problem with my portrayal of the “modern” birder. You see, there’s nothing especially modern about it. If you think about it for just a moment, I think you’ll agree that my portrait of the bird lover applies just as well to the 1950s as to the modern era. One need look no further than the life and legacy of Roger Tory Peterson (1908–1996, depicted at left) to see what I’m talking about. Peterson was at the height of his influence in the 1950s. It was Peterson who famously stated, “Boys in their teens make the keenest bird recorders, for once they fall under the spell of the ‘lure of the list,’ they play the game for all it is worth.” That sounds like something straight out of the 1980s. Yet those words come from the preface to Peterson’s mini-classic of 1948, How to Know the Birds. And as to bird identification, Peterson himself was for decades the best-known name in bird ID. (Isn't he still? I think so.) Flip to any page in any of Peterson's field guides, and you’ll see an unmistakably “modern” appreciation for bird identification.

Which brings me back to Miss Hathaway. I believe she is an emblem not for amateur bird study in the 1950s, but rather for the bird lovers of an earlier gilded era, namely, the 1920s. Quick!—What the heck was happening on the bird(watch)ing scene in the 1920s? I’d wager that most birders can’t say off the top of their heads. Yes, we know all about Frank Chapman’s revolutionary books and ideas from the turn of the 20th century; and, of course, we all know about Peterson’s breakthrough of 1934. But what of the entire generation that separates Chapman from Peterson? Here’s where it gets fascinating.

A little-told story is that amateur bird study in the early 20th century was dominated by women. And by ‘dominated,’ I mean just that. These women—Florence Merriam Bailey (1863–1948, depicted at right), Neltje Blanchan (1865–1918), Anna Botsford Comstock (1854–1930), and others—were major players in the mainstream culture of the day. From what I can tell, it took a few years for their books to catch on. But when they did, by the ’teens and ’20s, these women’s bird books had become enormously influential, performing better as publishing phenomena than the most successful of 21st-century field guides.

Their books were—I should say, their books still are—intriguing. For sure, they can be applied to bird identification. But there is so much more inside their covers. They are, for want of a better word, scientific. They are also, and I intend precisely this word, sentimental. They are all about applying careful observation (that’s the scientific part of the equation) to the cause of avian welfare (that’s the sentimental half, obviously). Later in the 20th century, the great American scientist Evelyn Fox Keller (b. 1936) exhorted us to attune our hearts and minds to “a feeling for the organism.” That’s what comes across on every page of such works as Merriam’s Birds Through an Opera Glass, Blanchan’s Birds Every Child Should Know, and Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study.

And is this perhaps where we find ourselves today, a century later? There’s a danger, I certainly realize, in attempting to extrapolate too broadly from one’s own experiences. That said, I am constantly struck by the reemergence in today’s birding culture of “a feeling for the organism.” I sense it everywhere I go. Today’s birders (see left) are way into molts and plumages, flight calls and chip notes, population status and conservation. Today’s birders pay attention to what’s going on in their own backyards. “Patchwork”—a term I’d never heard of ten years ago—is all the rage. Bigbying—yes, the gerundive has made it into print (Birding, January 2011, p. 8)!—is where it’s at. “Birding by impression,” as it is known today, is winning over many converts.

Birding in the second decade of the 21st century is increasingly a “right brain” affair, ever more “holistic,” admittedly “sentimental,” and—oh, yes—somehow more “feminine.” There is a sense, an exhilarating sense, that we are being swept up in a small-scale revolution. That’s wonderful. Bring it on. I’m all about new directions and new beginnings. But let’s keep perspective: We’ve been down this road before.

¡Viva la Revolución!

Long Live Miss Hathaway!