For the love of…birding!

by Karen Howden

I didn’t always love birds… in my teens they would wake me up at the crack of dawn, making me more likely to become a bird hunter than a bird watcher. In my 20s I attended school in north Idaho and lived in an old schoolhouse on the edge of a cedar forest. My favorite respite from studying was to grab an apple from a tree along the edge of the forest and spend the morning wandering in the woods, far away from the world of chemistry. On one of these walks, I spied a large, brilliantly blue bird with a black crest. His call was a grating screech. I was captivated by his gorgeous plumage and bold behavior. As this was the pre-internet age, I checked out a massive book on birds from the library and flipped page- by-page until I deduced it was a Steller’s jay, a type of blue jay found in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Intrigued, I bought a bird feeder and soon was inundated with evening grosbeaks, pine siskins and Stellar’s jays.

I didn’t know any birders and my bird knowledge was acquired one bird at a time, by flipping through a field guide. Seeking a better way to learn about birds, I decided to attend an Audubon Society meeting. I felt like the youngest one there… by decades. But, I did make one friend, someone about 15 years older than me that I knew from school but had never hung out with. This was the first of many connections that I’ve made due to my love of birds. My Audubon friend became my closest friend in grad school and she took me camping in her camper van throughout Utah and Arizona.

My parents also became birders in their retirement years. Before my kids were born, we’d meet up for spring bird walks and occasionally embark on far flung adventures. And, birds always gave us an excuse to pick up the phone to give the “bird report”. My kids have all embraced birding, especially in the spring because they knew that once the migrant warblers returned, school was out for summer! They happily traded their math books for nature journals and field trips to the woods behind our house, or our favorite park in Lake City.

As much as I have loved the many birds I’ve been able to observe in the last 30 years, the best part of birding is the connections I’ve seen between all generations of our family: from my 4 year old daughter to my 80+ year old father. We’ve made sweet memories on early morning treks into the woods when the bluebells are in bloom and the forest floor is alive with migrating birds.

I love the rhythm of different birds throughout the seasons, hummers, orioles and indigo buntings in summer and the return of juncos and hopefully a few redpolls in the winter. And in all this diversity of bird life, I am so thankful for our Creator who couldn’t make just one type of bird, but went wild with birds of all shapes and sizes and colors, spoonbills and pelicans, seed-eating grosbeaks and tiny calliope hummingbirds. It’s a reminder that just as the world needs this vast tapestry of different species who were tailor-made for different habitats and climates, God created each of us so uniquely to fulfill just a perfect niche in the body of Christ.

To close with my favorite bird verse, Matthew 6:26, says, “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” What a lovely reminder of how precious we are to our heavenly Father!

---

Karen and husband, Eric, have attended Calvary for 3 years. Depending on the season, she is either homeschooling her girls, attempting to see migrating songbirds, sleeping in and hoping the house cleans itself, or planning family trips.  She volunteers with Eric in teaching the Roots 5th/6th grade Sunday School class, and she is a high school small group leader on Wednesday evenings.  She is so grateful to be part of the Calvary community.