At Zion National Park, I used to conduct a short Birding for Beginners program for kids. I demonstrated how to use a pair of binoculars, explaining what the dials were for and how to rotate them open and closed, like a butterfly flapping its wings, until you could see one image through both lenses.
We discussed bird vocalizations, how they speak in different languages. I talked about the visual cues that help us distinguish between different types of birds–beaks, feet, color, and size.
I pointed above me to a painted plaster model of a California condor. “The largest bird in North America,” I said. “9 and a half foot wingspan. So rare there are only a few hundred left.”
Perhaps I failed to emphasize exactly how rare the condors are, how almost no one who visits the park sees one. Yes, a pair of condors was nesting that summer in Zion, but in a remote spot off the main canyon. I myself had never seen one.
Equipped with binoculars and basic bird knowledge, I took the three or four groups of kids and their guardians out the door of our small building and made a circuit of the parking lot.
I navigated us past the Say’s phoebe nest wedged above our building’s back door and the trees often crowded with chattering Western bluebirds. I pointed out birds, and the adults helped the children find them with their binoculars.
The same birds every time, and yet, I was always just as thrilled to help these new birders find them as they were to see them.
One afternoon a man called out “Ranger, I see a condor!”
I looked up. We were in the lower canyon, its rose-colored walls spread wide, the blue, cloudless sky visible for miles.
“Where?” I asked, expecting to see a large black shape circling overhead on thermals, in the manner of vultures.
“You just missed it,” the man said. He asked his son if he had seen it. The boy nodded, and the father was pleased with himself. “We saw one of those condors!”
“Where?” I repeated. Such a massive bird wouldn’t have disappeared in the second it took me to look up.
“It was just,” he gestured toward some trees. “It was black!”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I paused, uncertain how to respond.
“It was a big, black bird!” the man said, still thrilled with his find.
“OK,” I said. “Well, that’s great! Good for you.”
I went back to pointing out the birds we could see and watched the man glow with pride.
He absolutely had not seen a California condor. He might have glimpsed a turkey vulture or a crow. His descriptions of the bird’s movement and location suggested that he might have actually seen a bird-shaped tree limb.
Still, he was happy, and his child was happy that his father was happy. That was enough for me.
Perhaps this moment would inspire the child to love birds; perhaps this family would buy some binoculars and look for birds the next time they were in a national park.
Or perhaps they would just have a happy memory together as a family. “Remember that time we saw a rare bird? It looked just like a tree branch!”
One of the things I find distasteful about my fellow nature-lovers (or naturalists, as we’re sometimes called–though I think that sounds a little like we’re into public nudity), is that so many of us are a little snobby about what we know.
It’s not just naturalists who behave this way: many folks with niche interests get a little snooty about their knowledge. “Oh, you haven’t heard of that author?” or “I listened to them before they were mainstream, you know.”
Some nature nerds can become competitive over who knows more, who has the longer life list, who has been coming to that same spot the longest.
I once watched a colleague piss off an entire birding community by announcing that she had seen a bird that wasn’t on the local list. “Nope,” the birders insisted, “you did not see that bird.”
My colleague was a biologist who had spent months banding and tracking this particular bird in another place; she knew what she was talking about.
Still, the local birders revolted, starting rumors about her, not inviting her to their meetings so they could discuss her behind her back. It was like an episode of Housewives, except for people driving Subarus.
And the thing is, this was a professional biologist and bird expert these folks were dismissing. Imagine how they would have treated a novice birder who’d seen a rare bird.
My colleague didn’t back down, and eventually the bird was located and seen by some of the same birders who had scoffed at her. Two years later the bird was officially added to the list of local birds.
Knowledge of the natural world is a gift, but it is not precious. It is not a commodity, a currency, a way to seem smarter or more in the know than someone else. These are the behaviors of small minds and insecure egos; they cheapen what should be rich and gatekeep what should be open to all.
As naturalists, if we want people to care about nature, we have to teach them about it. If we want people to love what we love, we can’t shame or belittle their burgeoning interest.
Did the woman running up to the visitor center front desk screaming, “I saw a wolverine!” actually see a wolverine? Perhaps. There are wolverines.
Did she instead see the same marmot that every other visitor sees? Maybe. Either way, I’m going to nod and smile and encourage her excitement. I mean, she knows what a wolverine is. And that’s a start.