Birds of a Feather: A Meditation on Addiction

It started innocently enough, the way all addictions do.

A family hike during lockdown Spring 2020, when "going outside" felt like a radical act of rebellion and the word "essential" had been weaponized to mean everything and nothing. The kids were bouncing off the walls of our suddenly too-small house, my wife was vibrating with the specific energy of someone who'd reorganized the pantry twice in one week, and I was on my seventeenth refresh of the news, hoping this time the headlines would be different.

So we walked. And on that walk, somewhere between the desperate need for anything resembling normalcy and the bizarre silence of a world on pause, we heard them: birds. Not background noise birds. Birds. Singing their entire elaborate arias like they'd been waiting their whole lives for humans to finally shut up and listen.

My wife pulled out her phone—because of course there's an app for that—and opened Merlin Bird ID from Cornell University. She held it up like a priest performing an exorcism. Within seconds, the app told us we were listening to a Carolina Wren. Then a Northern Cardinal. Then a Tufted Titmouse, which made the kids giggle because "titmouse" is objectively funny when you're ten.

That was it. That was the moment. We'd found our pandemic hobby, though we didn't know yet that "hobby" was a word that would soon become as inadequate as calling the Pacific Ocean "damp."

The Merlin app was perfect. Instant gratification in a world where everything else required patience we didn't have. No need to flip through field guides like some Audubon Society elder with binoculars from 1987. Just hold up your phone, wait three seconds, and boom: positive ID. It was like Shazam for nature, and we were hooked.

Here's what they don't tell you about bird watching: it's free right up until the moment it costs everything.

Those first few months, we were casual users. Walks with the app. Maybe we'd point out a Red-bellied Woodpecker at the feeder we already had. Harmless. Innocent. The kind of thing you mention at Zoom happy hours because what else are you going to talk about, sourdough starter?

But then my wife started researching. And when my wife researches something, she doesn't Google it like a normal person. She goes full academic dissertation. Suddenly I'm hearing about nyjer seed versus black oil sunflower seeds. About how different species prefer different feeder types. About suet cakes and mealworms and something called "no-mess blend" that costs more per pound than our actual human food.

"It's educational for the kids," she said, which is what she always says when she's about to spend money on something she wants.

The bird seed budget started at $20 a month. Reasonable. Then $50. Still defensible. Now we're at $200 a month, and I'm pretty sure our backyard birds eat better than we do. I did the math once—mistake—and realized we're spending $2,400 a year to feed animals that would be perfectly fine without us. We've essentially become landlords who pay our tenants to live here.

But wait, there's more.

Because different birds need different accommodations, apparently. Bluebirds won't nest in just any box—1.5-inch hole, east-facing, five feet up, as if they'd filed a zoning request. They're pickier than Goldilocks, and I'm apparently their contractor now.

I should mention I'm not handy. I'm the guy who has to Google "which way is clockwise" while holding a screwdriver. But here I am, out there with my drill and my lumber and a YouTube tutorial playing on my phone, building custom real estate for birds who will use it for approximately six weeks before moving on with their lives, unburdened by gratitude or mortgage payments.

We now have:

Bluebird boxes. Three of them, because apparently we're running a franchise.

A wren house with a smaller entrance, because wrens are petite and also judgmental.

A chickadee box. They like cavities, who knew.

Multiple feeders: tube feeders, platform feeders, suet feeders, a fancy squirrel-proof one that cost $80 and which squirrels defeated in approximately three and a half minutes.

I'm pretty sure the neighbors think we've lost it. They don't say anything—they're too polite for that—but I see them glancing over when I'm out there with my tape measure and level, installing yet another birdhouse like I'm running some kind of avian commune. The lady next door used to wave. Now she just does this tight little smile and hurries inside, like the HOA forbids acknowledging madness.

I can't prove it, but I'm fairly certain we were discussed at their last dinner party. "Did you see they put up ANOTHER one? What are they doing over there?" I want to explain that the bluebirds and the chickadees can't share accommodations, that this is all very scientific and necessary, but I also know how that sounds.

The guy across the street asked me once, casually, "So... you really into birds, huh?" in the tone you'd use if you caught someone collecting toenail clippings. I said yes like it was a normal thing, like I wasn't standing there holding a bag of mealworms I'd just purchased at a store, with money, on purpose.

My wife has spreadsheets. SPREADSHEETS. Tracking which species visit when, what they prefer, migration patterns. She talks about "our" bluebirds like they're relatives. "Our bluebirds are back!" she'll announce, as if they've returned from college rather than from wherever bluebirds go in Florida, probably, like everyone else's retired relatives.

I've become the kind of person who knows what "fledging" means in casual conversation. Who can identify a Tufted Titmouse by call alone. Who has opinions about suet cake ingredients. I'm not sure when this happened, but I'm pretty sure it's irreversible.

The kids, predictably, have mostly moved on. They'll still glance up if something interesting appears—a hawk, a hummingbird, anything that moves fast or looks vaguely prehistoric—but the daily drama of the backyard bird soap opera has lost its appeal. They've returned to their screens, to their friends, to their lives that no longer revolve around survival and Zoom school and whatever small joys we could manufacture from captivity.

Except for the bluebirds.

When the bluebirds nest, everyone pays attention. Even my teenager, who hasn't voluntarily participated in a family activity since 2022, will casually ask, "Have they fledged yet?"

There's something about it—watching the parents fly back and forth with insects, seeing the babies grow from tiny alien-looking creatures to actual birds, waiting for that moment when they finally leave the nest. It's primal. Hopeful. A little metaphor we're all pretending not to notice. We pretended not to notice, because noticing meant remembering what we'd lost.

My wife checks the box daily, reporting on progress like a sports commentator. "Three eggs!" "They've hatched!" "They're getting their feathers!" She's invested in a way that makes me both concerned and oddly touched.

I get it, though. During the pandemic, we were all stuck in our nests, and now here are these birds, doing what we couldn't: growing up and flying away on schedule, unbothered by variants or mandates or the crushing weight of uncertainty. They just know when it's time to go, and they go.

I read somewhere that bird watching became one of the most popular new hobbies during the pandemic, which tracks. We all needed something to pay attention to besides the news, something that existed outside our homes and our fears, something that followed patterns we could still count on.

But here's the thing nobody mentions: bird watching is supposed to be an old person hobby. It's what you do when you retire, when you've got time and patience and a willingness to sit very still while wearing a vest with too many pockets.

The pandemic just fast-tracked us. Aged us. Turned us into the people we were supposed to become in twenty years, except we got there overnight. Now I'm in my backyard at 6 AM with coffee, watching to see who shows up at the feeders, mentally noting the first-of-season arrival of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and I think: Is this who I am now?

The answer, apparently, is yes. I'm the guy who spent last Saturday building a birdhouse while listening to a podcast about bird migration patterns. I'm the guy who gets genuinely excited when a new species shows up at the feeder. I'm the guy whose browser history is 40% bird-related and who has somehow become fluent in a language I didn't know existed.

But here's the thing: it's worked. We've attracted 43 different species to our yard in the five and a half years since that first identification. I know this because my wife has them documented in her spreadsheet. Forty-three. I'm not sure if I should be proud of this number or concerned that I am, in fact, very proud of this number. Like it's some kind of achievement. Like I'm going to put it on my LinkedIn.

Five and a half years. That first hit from the Merlin app, and we've been chasing it ever since. I honestly don't know how we'd live without it now. Without the app, without the feeders, without checking every morning to see who showed up. We don't need an intervention. Probably. Although the fact that I have to qualify that with "probably" might be its own answer.

My wife is already talking about building a water feature. "Birds need to bathe," she says, which is apparently my problem now. I've already started researching pumps and basin depths, because this is who I am now. This is who we are.

The kids have moved on, mostly. They've fledged, emotionally, from our pandemic bubble. They're back in the world, doing whatever it is teenagers do when they're not being held captive by global catastrophe.

But sometimes, on a Saturday morning, one of them will wander into the kitchen and pause at the window. "Is that a Baltimore Oriole?" they'll ask, and for just a moment, we're all back there together—that first spring, that first walk, that first bird we identified while the world held its breath.

And I'll open the Merlin app, because of course I still have it, because of course we're still doing this, and I'll say, "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

The app confirms it. The bird doesn't care. My wife adds another item to her seed shopping list.

And outside, the bluebirds are getting ready to fledge.