I am reading How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. But the book is not about doing nothing. It’s about what to do – about paying attention. Where social media captures our attention with screaming headlines, Odell advocates a deeper form of attention. In her own life, her interest in the birds around her is an example of deep attention. Previously, she saw birds flying; since she has immersed herself in them, she sees species and hears their specific sounds.
I recognize that. Since we were on the Marker Wadden and learned to tell a dozen duck and goose species apart there (Icy Duck and Casarca brought the bird watchers to orgasmic ecstasy), I’ve seen more and more specifics in my daily life as well.
I saw an Egyptian goose with youngsters yesterday. I thought Egyptian geese didn’t nest in the Netherlands, but according to Natuurmonumenten, I was utterly wrong.
On our roof was a large crow-like bird. A raven, maybe, I thought. My son says it’s probably just a crow. But this one has such a big beak. That’s right, he says, but most of the birds we see that we think are crows are actually jackdaws (kauwen). I looked it up, and he was right; my image of crows is jackdaws, and the bird we saw could be a crow. But it was big and had a crooked beak. I stick with a raven anyway.
We have been hearing a strange sound in the trees lately. A guest of ours recognizes it as the Collared Parakeet (Halsbandparkiet). I looked it up, and it is correct. In the trees beyond, I suddenly heard many more Collared Parakeets. One day, one pops into our window in a full diving flight. We solemnly place the exotic green-yellow “parrot” in the green bin.