Several years BC (Before Covid) during a visit to cousin Yossi in Herzliya Pituah, Israel, I saw the most gorgeous bird. Donning a glorious crown, regaled in black, white and orange plumage, the stunning creature was majestically parading on my cousin’s lawn. Yossi identified his highness as the “duchifat” Israel’s national bird, known to us as the hoopoe.
I had two other encounters with birds. Puccini, our white canary who sang for us for only two months, and expired and Mr. Pip, a yellow canary renamed Mrs. Pip after she laid one egg. Since then, birds have held little interest for me. Now I’m more intrigued after reading Julia Zarankin’s book Field Notes from and Unintentional Birder.
I’ve begun to understand the reason some people are passionate about birds or why their hobby has motivated them to get up at four in the morning and stand in cold weather, at most unglamorous locations, at times for six hours for the single purpose…to see and identify a particular bird. For author Julia Zarankin birding has become as much a part of her life as her writing, her marriage and her identity.
Born in Kharkiv, a PhD graduate in literature, Zarankin was raised with five pianos in her home. Her parents, concert pianists, immigrated to Canada. She knew nothing about nature. The outside was a place of danger, a place for “others”. Strongly encouraged to take piano lessons and solfege, Zarankin would not reach the musical heights that her parents expected. She possessed neither talent for playing nor singing nor ballet, another cultural requirement that left her feeling inadequate. After a failed marriage, bored with teaching Russian literature she searched for a hobby that brought her peace and energized her spirits, “without doing yoga.”
Reluctant to join a “strange breed of humans” who wore multi-pocketed vests and carried binoculars as de-rigeur accessories, had birds embroidered on their clothes, Zarankin saw a “red-winged blackbird” and felt inexplicable “joy in the moment.” That powerful feeling of exultation transformed her into a “bird nerd.”
Semi-autobiographical, Zarankin’s narrative connects her own life cycle to birds. She associates the “genetic” migration” of some birds who fly south to her own “forced migration” as a child fliting from Leningrad where her mom studied to visiting her grandparents in Odessa before settling in Canada. In contrast with her parents who valued accomplishment, Zarankin has learned to befriend failure and limitations as part of her identity. She credits her hobby with recognizing the value of patience and balances it with optimism and self-acceptance when she can’t locate a rare bird or identify one as easily as more experienced birders.
Zarankin is happily married to a “powerlifter” who supports her passion but spends his spare time indoors working out at the gym.
