What Bird Watching Gave Me After My Miscarriage

It was satisfying to see those robins, sparrows, and starlings, because they were still with us. They had stayed.

My husband Josh and I were standing in the shade off a horse trail in the woods of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, sharing one pair of binoculars. We had nicknamed the spot “Chipmunk Heaven” because we always saw dozens of them here, rustling in the grass, making us think they were robins or thrushes or other birds that pick in the leaf litter. It was June of 2015 and we had recently started bird-watching, or birding, as it’s also called. (Yes, we’d read that Jonathan Franzen essay.)

I had just had a miscarriage. It was my first pregnancy. We were feeling shocked, unmoored. Josh needed a distraction, something to throw himself into, and I followed, still sleepwalking through the days after my D&C. He bought field guides. He gave me a pair of binoculars, at my request, for our second anniversary. He started reading blogs that cataloged the different birds recently seen near us, so he knew what to look for.

There were the easy ones: robins, starlings, hundreds of sparrows. Then there was the addictive jolt of seeing a yellow-crowned night heron for the first time, our eyes picking it out of the shoreline like something in a Magic Eye print at the mall. I was so jealous the time Josh saw an owl on a solo birdwalk.

It was late in the Spring Migration—basically, Fashion Week for birding—when hundreds of species of (mostly little yellow) birds fly north from South America. Birders live for this time of year, and then again for the reverse migration in the fall. For about a month, a birder can really grow their life list (a master list most birders keep of all the birds they’ve ever seen).

I wasn’t Googling birding hot spots like Josh. I hadn’t stopped Googling miscarriage nine weeks, miscarriage empty gestational sac, pregnancy after miscarriage. We both knew birding, anything, was better than that. And it was a good reason to spend time outside, walking through the park. Trying not to think about what I’d lost.

*

That summer after the miscarriage and into the fall, Josh and I went birding almost every weekend, frequenting spots he’d noticed on eBird or other websites on which birders report what they’ve seen. Near us, it was the same handful of places: our Chipmunk Heaven, Ambergill Falls, the Lullwater, the Butterfly Meadow. Some were farther from our apartment and took more time: the Ravine, the Vale of Cashmere. We’d get to a spot we liked, that had seen a lot of “traffic” before, and stand quietly in the shade, looking up. Prospect Park is obscenely green in the summer; the deeply wooded areas cooler, quieter, away from the masses of runners and bike riders and picnickers. We could escape there.

It’s exhilarating to ID a bird for the first time, or to solve the puzzle of a tricky ID, either because you are inexperienced—like us—or because the damn bird won’t sit still or come down lower in the trees or turn around so you can see its head. But there in Prospect Park we would spot the tiny yellow butt of a yellow-rumped warbler. Crane our necks to see the difference between a ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglet. Whisper in the direction of great blue herons. Count how many red-tailed hawks we could see in one day.

Josh would spot what he wanted to spot, or what he felt he was likely to, and then he would want to move on—always looking for a better position, something new. This is not a bad approach to birding; in fact, it’s highly effective if you want to see as many birds as possible. But it wasn’t how I wanted to bird. I was happy to stand in one spot or pace a small area for as long as possible, looking up, waiting for the flit of a wing to catch my eye. It was quiet and still outside, and I was not quiet and still inside.

Keeping a life list didn’t feel very important to me. I took some notes on my phone and made a half-hearted attempt at starting a list in a pretty birding journal Josh got for me, but I finally realized I just don’t take the Pokémon approach: I’m not trying to collect them all.

Looking back now, it’s clear why I never seriously tried to keep a list. Writing things down does not make them stay.

*

At first, after the miscarriage, my body was a stranger. I didn’t think it or I did anything wrong to end the pregnancy; it just happened. Still, I felt unsteady on my feet. If my uterus didn’t do what it was supposed to do, how did I know my toes, knees, arms would? I stopped going to yoga. I felt shaky in downward facing dog. I didn’t want to pay attention to what was going on inside of me, physically or mentally, because my body had betrayed me. I didn’t trust it.

When we were birding, I could pay attention to something completely removed from my body. I could watch for rustling in the branches, listen for calls, feel the sun on my face and the ground beneath my feet. I was rewarded for noticing these things with a correct identification, or learning a new one, or seeing some birds who became like old friends: strident, nosy catbirds. My favorite ducks, coots, and their little white bills. The swans and their cygnets by the boathouse.

Birding, to me, became a way to feel at home somewhere when I didn’t feel at home in my body. I could go to the Lullwater and see my coots, or see the goldfinches at the Butterfly Meadow. After migration, it was satisfying to see even those boring robins, sparrows, and starlings, because they had stayed. They were still with us.

As the trauma of my miscarriage faded, I started to understand my body again. I went birding to see those familiar faces, and revel in the surprise of a new sighting. Remember the painted bunting that flew hundreds of miles off course and landed in Brooklyn? I went to see it half a dozen times.

I got pregnant again. In my last weeks of pregnancy, I would walk by myself through Prospect Park in the middle of the afternoon. I took the same route, down the path between the baseball fields and around the dog pond where it was shady and cool. I talked to our daughter. Oh look, it’s a wood duck. Did you hear the blue jays? There must be a hawk nearby.

It was the same walk most days, the same birds. It was August, a crap time of year for birding, but I went anyway, knowing my days of solo walks in the park were numbered.

Josh and I go birding a lot less now, because toddlers are not interested in birding. But when we do go to the park, whether it’s a rare birdwalk or a trip to the playground, I still find myself wanting to slow down, look up, stay in one spot. I don’t really feel the need to see more, rare, different birds. I want see the familiar ones, the ones who never left.

*

Kate is teaching a one-day master class on the business of publishing this October. Check it out (and sign up!) here.