Quotes About Birdwatching

#1. I don't go birdwatching. I am birdwatching. Birdwatching is a state of being, not an activity. It doesn't depend on place, on equipment, on specific purpose, like, say, fishing. It is not a matter of organic trainspotting; it is about life and it is about living.

Simon Barnes

#2. From my earliest memories I was fascinated by animals. I would explore my backyard for insects and gaze at anthills until my elbows became sore. When I was 8, my mother bought me a book of North American birds and I've been keen on birdwatching since.

Jonathan Balcombe

#3. Quote taken from Chapter 1:
The June afternoon had clear, blue skies - ideal weather for birdwatching.

Ed Lynskey

#4. By the age of 11, I was no longer going to Sunday Mass, and going on birdwatching walks with my father. So early on, I heard of Charles Darwin. I guess, you know, he was the big hero. And, you know, you understand life as it now exists through evolution.

James D. Watson

#5. To be standing together in a frosty field, looking up into the sky, marvelling at birds and revelling in the natural world around us, was a simple miracle. And I wondered why we were so rarely able to appreciate it.

Lynn Thomson

#6. I don't feed the birds because they need me; I feed the birds because I need them.

Kathi Hutton

#7. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street he cried out, "Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly ... . No, it's nonsense, it's rubbish!" he added resolutely.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#8. Most men who have really lived have had, in some share, their great adventure. This railway is mine.

James J. Hill

#9. Every bird at the marsh filled us with a little light. I wondered if I was just so simple that this was all it took. But then I thought, I'm lucky that this is all it takes, and knew that I was especially lucky that this was all it took for my teenaged son, too.

Lynn Thomson

#10. We can _start_ making Christmas and Santa can finish up.

Toni Buzzeo

#11. He had a goatee that was maybe growing into something that was more than a goatee, which made him look like an angry barista at an indie coffee shop whose dreams of becoming a successful screenwriter were dwindling by the hour.

Lev Grossman

#12. I sat there and my love to him poured out more and more, and, lo, he flew down to a stump, and then to my knee. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the important thing is the love that goes out from oneself.

Agnes Grinstead Anderson

#13. Everything Mengistu has done since 1977 has been to place himself in a position of uncontestable power. Neither Haile Selassie nor any of the previous emperors had this insatiable thirst for power.

Mengistu Haile Mariam

#14. Some people are very competitive in their birding. Maybe they'll die happy, having seen a thousand species before they die, but I'll die happy knowing I've spent all that quiet time being present.

Lynn Thomson

#15. When anyone becomes an authority, that is the end of him as far as development is concerned.

Frank Lloyd Wright

#16. I think the most important quality in a birdwatcher is a willingness to stand quietly and see what comes. Our everyday lives obscure a truth about existence - that at the heart of everything there lies a stillness and a light.

Lynn Thomson

#17. Some of the greatest sermons that have ever been preached were preached by the singing of a song.

Spencer W. Kimball

#18. Binoculars, and a hawk-like vigilance, reduce the disadvantage of myopic human vision.

J.A. Baker

#19. The sharp thrill of seeing them [killdeer birds] reminded me of childhood happiness, gifts under the Christmas tree, perhaps, a kind of euphoria we adults manage to shut out most of the time. This is why I bird-watch, to recapture what it's like to live in this moment, right now.

Lynn Thomson