By Gigi
The inside flap of Simon Barnes’ book How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher says it all: “Look out the window. See a bird. Enjoy it. Congratulations! You are now a bad birdwatcher.” Although we prefer “lazy” to “bad,” we endorse the sentiment—bird 
watching is easy.
Barnes, the award-winning chief sportswriter for The Times of London, is a bird watcher and wants us to be bird watchers, too. Chapter one, “Not just a nice hobby,” starts with a quotation from Nobel-winning author Orhan Pamuk and goes on to describe a typical day of birding: “It was a nice day of early summer, the kind of day when a chap’s eyes keep turning to the girls who have molted into their skimpy summer plumage and men wear jackets on their thumbs.” Clearly, this is a writer with interests beyond birding.
He writes that birding requires the same observation skills as noting good weather—that is to say, almost none at all. Chapter four discusses the simple utility of a bird feeder and chapter 15 the importance of going to different locales in order to see different birds—obvious but necessary to mention, Barnes writes. One of Barnes’ favorite locations is the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in New York City where snow geese and hooded mergansers (pictured) play.
Perhaps even more interestingly, chapter six gives us the inside scoop on birding snobbery. Apparently, real birders don’t carry field guides. But, Barnes says, we should. “Get a field guide. Any field guide,” he writes. And note to the novice: Some birders also despise the term “bird watching,” preferring “birding” instead. Therefore, it follows that you are a "birder" not a "bird watcher."
The short of it is that you don’t have to know what you’re doing to enjoy bird watching. It’s as easy as throwing a pair of binoculars in your shoulder bag. Barnes says some funny things about binoculars, too. One of the first pairs he bought “weighed as much as a dead albatross.” Yours doesn’t have to.