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I Twitch, Therefore I Am (Plus Personal Asides) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-07

Note: I apologize for to some extent plowing over already turned ground in the personal note that follows toward the end. At this point I have two reasons. I am to a large extent continuing exorcising my own demons, and at the same time I hope that I am also helping people who have been in similar situations. I have learned that having difficult parents is more widespread than I had thought.

However to start out I have to admit that I’ve only actually “Twitched” a total of nine times: four times (three successfully and one unsuccessfully) in New Mexico, two times (all successful) in Texas, and three times (one successful) in Washington state. Twitching is the apparently British term for following up on a rare bird report to try and see the bird yourself. It often means sparing no expense to find a reported rare bird. Being of limited means I simply cannot afford such hobbies, but if I get a chance I’ll follow up on a nearby location.

Of the successful twitches in New Mexico and Texas, all but one were word of mouth from Mesilla Valley Audubon birders. I successfully twitched a Little Blue Heron, a Common Ground Dove, and a Aplomado Falcon in New Mexico and a Black-legged Kittiwake and Long-tailed Duck in Texas. However, I never found the White-tailed Kite in New Mexico. In Washington, alerted by Pilchuck Audubon I failed to find a Great Egret and a Swamp Sparrow, but did find a Vaux Swift. All in all not the greatest twitching record, but then I’m not quite the fanatic birder that some are and I generally don’t look for rare bird reports. Although maybe I should as I am running out of new birds to see in Washington state, having recently added the Short-eared Owl and the Tundra Swan! See: www.dailykos.com/...)

I was inspired to think about this by a book, Bird Girl, by Mya-Rose Craig. She is indeed a rare bird, a British- Bangladeshi who was only 20 years old when she published her book and who as a young girl had reached a life list of over 4000 species because her father could afford to fly the family off to Africa, Australia, Asia, Antarctica and Madagascar, when interesting birds were reported. Despite her family’s better financial status, I easily identified with her because she had a bipolar mother (my father was diagnosed as bipolar in his seventies, but in truth he was monopolar- high as a kite most of the time. Also his problem was exacerbated by the fact that he was an extreme narcissist and I doubt that he could have been helped, as Craig’s mother was, by having an all-consuming hobby!)

Aplomado Falcon, Corralitos Road, New Mexico.

Common Ground Dove, Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park, New Mexico.

Black-legged Kittiwake, El Paso, Texas.

Another birding book I have been reading, Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper, was another eye-opener for me and explained to me why I am sympathetic to LGBTQ issues. Cooper is a gay black man and I am a heterosexual white man. We both enjoy birding and oddly enough we both had a history of having to hide our sexuality. Cooper because the era in which he grew up was hostile to any differences in the “norm” (and still is in some parts of the country and with some groups) and me because I was sequestered at home based on a belief of my mother that I was too delicate to go to school. I had been in the hospital with breathing problems as a baby and my sister had died in infancy of SIDs. Starting with my teen years my mother was on a crusade to keep me from ever having a girlfriend and between my father’s narcissistic monopolar mania and her determination that I should be with her until she died (She once asked me directly if I couldn’t wait until she was dead!) I developed a nasty case of PTSD. I was never sexually abused, but according to an incest survivor activist whom I met many years later, it amounted to the same thing. It really cast a shadow on me until I met my future wife to be and had the courage to walk out the door, despite my mother’s threats of suicide (See: www.dailykos.com/…, www.dailykos.com/...) Of course I still, after a number of years of therapy, have recurrences of my OCD, panic attacks and depression, but my wonderful wife (who has unfortunately been in a care facility for the last three plus years) gave me a great gift of her just being there and not being afraid to confront my parents, if necessary. Like both Craig and Cooper, early on I got my solace from the natural world and I will always be grateful that I had that to fall back on until I could finally untangle myself from being trapped. Note: My mother never did commit suicide! She died over 20 years after I left, at a nursing home from a blood clot in her brain. However, I did see that the way women were treated in the 1950s and earlier and the loss of her father when she was about nine years old, along with my sister’s death, contributed to my mother’s attitudes. Those issues were the things that kept me with them for years after I should have left. She was a reasonably good mother until I was about ten, when her overprotective attitude started to be too much. By the time I left, she had played the suicide card one time too many.

Fortunately, like Cooper, nobody cared if I took long hikes in the wild, where I gained solace from the contact I had with the natural world. At the time I concentrated mostly on insects and plants, but slowly started watching birds as well. Since I retired I have spent much more time birding, but I’ll never be in league with the best birders like Craig.

The point of both books is that any contact with the natural world is helpful and bird watching is a soothing and intellectually stimulating hobby that can offer comfort when life gives you lemons. For me it is something I can do with one of my daughters on a regular basis. It gets you out in the natural world and allows for a degree of sanity in a insane world. Right now we all need something to keep us from going insane!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/7/2305395/-I-Twitch-Therefore-I-Am-Plus-Personal-Asides?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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