Youthful yet wise Ezra White shares his birding journey
Read about the wondrous experiences that this young birder has already enjoyed, and learn a thing or two about what you can gain as a young birder!
December 2023
All photos provided by Ezra and family
What has birding taught you?
This is a difficult question to answer, and not because I cannot think of a response, but because there are simply so many different answers that I could give. From the technicalities of Baird’s Sandpipers’ wing projection to the range expansion of the Fish Crow to the high-pitched songs of the Bay-breasted Warbler, I’ve learned so much (yet incredibly little in the bigger picture) about those wonderful feathered creatures. And not only have I learned about birds, but birding has been a gateway of its own in the world. If I weren’t a birder, I would not know the definition of brackish water (prime bird habitat); the difference between acrylic paint and gouache (bird illustration!); or even the geography of my own state (it is important to know when traveling to find rarities). To put this all together, birding has taught me how to understand the wonders of the world that we all share. I’ve learned to notice what I never would have seen or heard, to live alongside the natural world, and to never lose amazement in the everyday. Most of all, I’ve learned to accept how little I—and all people—truly understand.
How did you get interested in birding?
Unlike some, my obsession with birdwatching didn’t start with a breathtaking encounter or a phenomenal rarity. Instead, it began with a relatively everyday sighting of a Chipping Sparrow hopping nonchalantly across a lawn in a local arboretum. I pointed out its petite chestnut cap to my mother, who soon phoned my grandparents and asked them to purchase The Sibley Guide to Birds for my upcoming birthday to help me identify this unknown bird and others. It took me months to bother peeking into what was practically a scholarly volume as it sat quietly on my coffee table, as I had thought it a strange birthday present for a six-year-old who at the time had no particular interest in birds whatsoever. But when I came to peek inside it on a long July night, I was utterly amazed, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Could you share a memorable story or adventure that birding has led to?
I’ll have to think back to a day last August that my father and I spent at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most notable migration hotspots of the northeastern coast (only a few miles from the monstrosity of Atlantic City, bustling and devoid of birds). Sunrise, as I remember, turned the saltmarsh into a black-and-white expanse of marsh grass and thousands of constantly moving birds. As I stepped timidly from the pulled-over car, anything seemed possible as I watched a small flock of Gull-billed Terns flying into a pond at one moment and then peeked through a row of tall grass at the side of the road to see that they had been replaced by a flock of ten Forster's Terns scanned through over a thousand Semipalmated Sandpipers to find a White-rumped in their midst, watched an American Avocet and a Wilson’s Phalarope scurrying together through the lowering tide, and looked up to see a flock of nearly sixty Short-billed Dowitchers flying into a flat of freshly uncovered mud, shortly followed by a smaller grouping of Stilt Sandpipers. But these were not the only specialties of Forsythe, for as early morning chills escaped between the fingers of the day and as the sun rose to its fullest height, our moments of glory were interrupted by hordes of green-headed flies, which we could hear banging against our car’s doors and windows as my father frantically drove at speeds embarrassingly high above the speed limit of ten miles per hour to ward off their painful bites. Our stops along the drive became shorter and shorter until we decided to walk the road instead, not giving the flies the satisfaction of a warm, slowly moving car. But even with these obstacles, the outing was well worth the trouble even though bird numbers were decreasing in the then-blazing sun. With fifty-four avian species, over two-thousand individual birds, two hotels, three–hundred fifty–six miles in the car, and innumerable biting flies, after this day and night we were more tired and without doubt more rewarded than we had been for all other fourteen days of vacation along the Atlantic.
Ezra photographing birds at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge
Caspian Terns with a background Laughing Gull taken by Ezra
