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As the Red-breasted Sapsucker in southwestern Oregon shows at the right, birds are pretty, and it's fascinating to see the variety of sizes and shapes they come in. They do interesting things, and make cheerful sounds. In a world that sometimes can be dreary, birds are a delight to behold.
Moreover, birds around our homes are in fact a part of nature and they're doing natural things. You don't have to go to a wildlife reserve or national park to see "wild nature." Birds around our homes are not like domesticated dogs and cats, horticultural plants in our lawns, or ornamental trees planted along our streets. Birds are free to roam wherever they wish and to do what is natural for them. They just have adaptations enabling them to exploit sufficient-for-them resources in the human environment.
With birds we can see with our own eyes, right in our own backyards, examples of how wild animals deal with seasonal changes, how they raise families, how they interact with one another and their environment, how they handle mankind's disruptions and, on an even grander scale, how their appearances and behaviors reflect the general laws of nature. And, if we're lucky, maybe someday we'll see something like what Cindy Mead in Michigan photographed one winter day outside her window, shown at the left: A Cedar Waxwing catching one snowflake after another...
Of course, all this can also be said of other wild animals occasionally coming into our backyards. However, birds are much more complex than insects and other arthropods, and there are many more different kinds of birds than, say, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.
Last but not least, another good reason to focus on birds is that there are wonderful field guides enabling us to identify any bird we see, and innumerable books and other sources informing us about every species. Both birds, and bird information, are accessible, and -- as the above Black-crested Titmouse in Texas seems to be telling us -- bird watching is something doable.
BIRDER AT WORK