Ben

So this is a tattoo of a hooded warbler. It’s my 12th tattoo, and it’s a little more relevant to my being than most of my other tattoos. Here’s how. 

When I was in grade school, I lived on a cul-de-sac in Toledo, Ohio & spent a lot of time by myself. Usually it was spent with my nose in a book or my eyes on a videogame. Although I had a small cluster of friends, I was mostly content to spend time alone and create my own universe in my head. From the get-go, I figured out I was kind of an oddball, and found myself having a difficult time relating to the kids on my block or at my school, much less understanding myself.

My best friend growing up was my neighbor, Brandon, who lived three houses down from me. Whenever I did any kind of outdoor activity; ranging from basketball (which I hated, because I was bad at sports) to playing tag or hide-and-go-seek (which I hated, because I was chubby and the slowest one on the block & was perpetually “it”) to climbing trees (which I hated, at least at first, because I was terrified to proceed beyond a certain height on our neighborhood trees because of my chubbiness) it was usually with Brandon and a few other kids on the block. I hated all these things, but ultimately I liked the interaction with the kids around me who made me feel like I was a part of something bigger. 

At some point, Brandon invited me to go birdwatching with his family; sometime around third grade or so. I can’t remember why I decided to go - because the thought of being outdoors for an entire day in a different state without access to a videogame or some form of electronic stimulation scared the shit out of eight-year-old me. 

The first time we went, we piled into his family’s rust red Ford Tempo and drove a few hours north into Michigan, stopping only to eat at Cracker Barrel or switch the cassette tape (usually either The Doors of Jefferson Airplane). I nervously picked at my nails until we arrived, meeting a couple cars worth of Brandon’s family. 

Immediately, some of the elements that I loved in videogames started to jump out at me. When we went into the park, there were a set of boardwalk paths notated by different colors, which felt like the levels of a videogame to me. And when Brandon’s dad pulled out a Peterson’s Field Guide - really, that was it. I was hooked. 

The Peterson’s Field Guide contained a plethora of hand-drawn birds based on the kind of book that you bought. When Brandon’s father spotted something fluttering with his binoculars, he paged through the guide and immediately found what he was looking for. He then noted the date and the park name where he saw the bird with pen on the text of the field guide.

This blew my little kid mind for a couple of reasons.

1. It was the first time I had ever seen anybody write in a book that wasn’t a textbook of some kind. I couldn’t understand why someone would do that to something with art in it! So many pictures of pretty birds covered the guide; why would he deface his book, let alone bring it outside of the house where it could be subject to the elements?

2. Birdwatching was now just like a videogame. In the same way I would run around the world of Hyrule as Link in The Legend of Zelda collecting heart containers and sword upgrades, I wanted to run up and down the boardwalk and spot every single fucking bird in that field guide. It became a compulsion. Collecting “birds” (or rather, gathering the experience of spotting them) was a real-world way for me enjoy the things I enjoyed digitally within the world that actually existed around me. I couldn’t level up, and I couldn’t gain experience points or happen upon extra lives - but the tangibility of it all overwhelmed me, and spotting a rare bird often felt like conquering a boss fight in the eyes of grade-school me.

For the next few years, I’d run around with Brandon’s family on bird watching trips all throughout the tri-state area, filling out my Peterson’s Field Guide with the new birds I had laid eyes upon. And every time I went, I had a blast - but early May was by far & away the best time to go birdwatching in the area where we lived.

The second Saturday of every May is National Migratory Bird Day. It’s around this time that birds decide “Florida is a sweltering armpit of shit, let’s get out of here” and fly forever until they reach Canada for the summer. In order to do this, they generally ride a tradewind that takes them over where I’m from in the Midwest, and it’s during this time that we’d get to see birds that we wouldn’t normally be privy to in our area.

These birds were warblers - short, tiny little sparrow-like guys whom all had flashes of yellow in some capacity within their color configuration. Blue jays and cardinals were relatively common - but an explosion of yellow was something special. I can’t tell you how many kinds of warblers there are off the top of my head, but the hooded warbler was always my favorite; he was a little bit awkward and a little more chubby than the other warblers.

In short: if I had a spirit animal, it’d likely be this dude.

The boardwalks at the parks were always packed with people far and wide during this weekend. It was a intense media scrum of gigantic camera lenses, bucket hats and fannypacks - and if you were loud enough to scare off an elusive black-throated blue warbler, you were going to get the midwestern death stare from a park full of eagle-eyed fowl scholars. Brandon and I, as children, were a definite minority amongst those who participated in these adventures.

So you watched. You wrote in your book. You treated the park with respect, and you took in the day with all five of your senses. When you’re plodding on a boardwalk inches at a time and diligently scanning the landscape for the slightest hint of movement; time can stop. The days seemed like they lasted forever, and I can’t remember the last time I experienced any sort of similar temporal vortex in my life.

In the middle of high school, Brandon and I sort of parted ways, and the Ford Tempo - along with its collection of cassettes - became his own. I moved to a new house near a park. Although we remained friends, he stuck it out with kids who mostly ostracized me, so I went off on my own in search of something that felt more correct, much like the migratory warbler.

But I think about birdwatching a lot, and what I’d be doing in my life if I never went with Brandon on that damp day. It was incredibly formative how I was able to bring some of my most comfortable behaviors into the real world, and how many of those behaviors transfered over into journalism, social media - the odd mosaic of flesh that I am.

The hooded warbler is his Dad’s favorite warbler, too.