Diary of a Left-Handed Birdwatcher

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Poet Nathan, who took up the hobby late in life, here ponders on the physical and philosophical aspects of birdwatching as he argues with an ornithologist friend about the meaning of epiphany. With a group of experienced birdwatchers, he spends hours in a Manitoba swamp waiting to see the small and secretive Yellow Rail; on another outing, he seeks the elusive snow bunting. Frequently, Nathan spends hours under wretched conditions only to glimpse the blur of a wing. He dreams about birds and longs to compile an anthology of poems about them. Birders at any level will enjoy his account of field trips, and more serious thinkers will appreciate his commentary on the basic nature of birdwatching. (Oct.)

Library Journal

While not geared to the average chickadee-loving bird watcher, this title will be appreciated by readers who love both birds and poetry. Nathan, a noted poet, has compiled essays on his passion: finding the elusive snow bunting. He muses in conversations with his wife, his ornithologist friend Lewis, and his Thursday Group of fellow birders on the idea of epiphany. Nathan longs for the "heart-stirring sensation that goes with a clear vivid vision of a bird" and the immediate realization that something special has manifested itself in finding a much-longed-for quarry. Liberally sprinkled with quotations on birds from well-known poets and philosophers and with his own poems, Nathan's book has added a needed dimension to the now popular pastime and even passion of birding. For natural history and literary collections.Phyllis Pope Bofferding, Hennepin Cty. Lib., Minnetonka, Minn.

Kirkus Reviews

"It's a sort of . . . well . . . meditation on birdwatching," explains Nathan (Returning Your Call, 1975, etc.) to a friend interested in his latest writing venture. Well, yes, to put it mildly.

Nathan is a poet of some repute, but let's be frank: Birds are what fire this guy's imagination. In spying them, he experiences their "rare and real presence." Had he religious inclinations, he might have let their epiphanic qualities fashion him into a true believer. But he was not willing to surrender his sacred experiences with birds to the ether; he wanted to seize these epiphanies, take their measure. To that end he has collected, in brief concentrated episodes, a swarm of birdish thing: remembrances of delightful days afield with his bird-watching group, Thursday's Children; snippets of relevant bird poetry from Robert Frost to the Indian sage Valmiki to Walt Whitman; delicious tidbits, such as a description of the magnificent Aztec aviary the Spanish discovered when they reached Mexico City; the use of three field guides at once, "enabling you to triangulate the bird, to come a little closer to its reality perhaps"; forays after tips received from the bird hotline; an ongoing disputation with his good friend Lewis, an ornithologist, about the exact meaning of his quest, an exchange that forces Nathan to get specific; and a superb telling of the apocryphal adventures of Virgilio Stampari, an imaginary 15th-century Italian explorer and collector of strange and wonderful bird lore.

It is a mighty challenge, this effort to communicate with the ineffable, but Nathan never shirks. No smoky similitudes will do—only luminous clarity. And while, like the furtive yellow rail, the big picture is elusive, the glimpses allowed Nathan are worth everything.