Why do middle aged people become obsessed with birds?

[HauntedBungalow]

I have seen it many times. Onset appears to be between 40-45 and by 50 they are deep in the grip of it.

What is going on?

My friends dh lates 40s has suddenly got into birds. The amount he spends each month on feeding them and buying feeders etc is a lot. I only know this as she moans at me about how much he's spent 😁 but she loves how much pleasure it gives him

Love that. Brilliant story.

My mum was a biology teacher, no more obsessed with birds than any other part of the natural world but she did carry a few bird bones around in her handbag for years because she found them beautiful and interesting.

Because you realise the beauty of everyday things and the importance of taking time to just ‘be’

I look out for the return of the swallows each year. It’s a reminder of time passing and reassuring they’re still around. Birds are our first indicator that the world is going wrong.

Childhood is about discovery , the joy of cloud watching, muddy puddles ,the world is new and exciting. When you reach middle age you think about your place in the world, how precious our time is and how we are just a speck in the universe. .. you want to recapture your childhood…. Hence the love of nature and of birds.

This happened to me in the described age range. I’m in the grip now but I can’t get out of it - they seem to know which window is my bedroom and tweet outside it when the food has gone. They all go bananas whenever I go outside. Also, I went away for a week and they shat all over my car in what I believe was a protest over my absence.

Im not sure if Im their benevolent leader or if in fact I’m their captive. Please advise.

Probably by the time you're 40 you're too old and frail for any more active pastimes so you have to fill your declining years somehow....

DH was researching litter pickers on Amazon the other day …..

What’s wrong with that?

Nothing at all, and I will join him on his weekly litter pick when we’ve finished refilling the bird feeders.

It’s just not something we envisaged we would be doing, when we met all those years ago.

Definitely getting older, and embracing it 😂

It hit me early then- I'm mid 30s. I love bird spotting on a run- often see a heron, robins, dippers & kingfishers and I love it 😃
I love crows, they're so smart it's incredible.

It's the corvids for me, all of them, from the shy and flighty Jays, through the lairy teenage Jackdaws to the Gothy crows and the sociopathic magpies. Something fascinating about them that speaks to part of me that I didn't know existed. 46 years and feeling it.

Before I had the Merlin app, I was out for a walk and heard what I though was a goldcrest, so googled the song, and was listening to the recording when I realised the actual bird had come down and was sitting in the branches above my head and was trying to 'out-sing' it's rival!

If your Merlin app identifies a goldcrest, try playing the song back at it, and you may get the bird to come closer so you can see it.

Thank you for starting this thread @HauntedBungalow I have now installed the Merlin app; thank you all for the tip.

I got the 'Picture This' app for identifying plants and trees a few years ago and I love it. I realised how ignorant I am about our natural world and wanted to make a tiny dent in my lack of knowledge.

Using Picture This means that any walk not curtailed by a deadline takes three times longer than it needs to. Now I have got Merlin too, goodness knows how long a stroll might take 😁

I love watching the birds , started with a posting to Salisbury plain . Now where I live I have all sorts in my garden . Sparrows , Goldfinch ,Yellow Hammers and birds of prey .

Just read a book this morning that contained a phrase saying that after 50, people prefer collaborating with nature instead of with people. That may have some resonance to the question at hand.

See this is what I love about MN . When we meet people face to face everyone portraits themselves as very ordinary ,but reality is we are all weird .
We all have strange habits that for some reason we are encouraged to hide it . show our real selves .
Unless your real habits are damaging .

I want to litter pick in my local area but am still summoning the self-confidence to brazen it out past my self-consciousness.

I even thought about buying a fluorescent jacket as a sort of 'reverse disguise' 😳

Dunno, but we’ve got to a point as a family where we can know the ‘locals’ for our back garden.

Especially as the fattest wood pidgeon in the world, that has hung around for years suddenly appears to have found a wife.

This post made me laugh 😂 this happened to me at around 45. I'm obsessed with my fat ball feeder being full and when a woodpecker arrived I had a meltdown and kept videoing it on my phone for no reason whatsoever. I've also noticed a myriad of other middle aged things happening such as getting joy from lining up my tins in the cupboard and putting washing on the line. I'll be listening to Daniel O'Donnell next and buying Cliff Richards Christmas album 😂😂

😂😂

Dd2 is a twitcher. None of us middle age parents are.

I'm so glad I clicked on this thread to be recommended the Merlin app. How lovely. I love seeing the birds, I wish I could have bird feeders but we have cats so we can't really do it.

Have loved birds since childhood when I was given the AA book of British birds. I still refer to it. The thrill of having puffins at my feet on Skomer and seeing a beautiful quetzal in Costa Rica. DH loves to photograph them while I'm hankering after a bloody expensive pair of binoculars when Black Friday comes around.
Can't begin to describe our pride when a blue tit deigns to build a nest in one of our boxes!

Yes that certainly chimes with me!

Mortal enemies of our lovely gentle song birds. They will eat knackered migrating birds, after they have slogged it back from Africa to their old nest in your garden. They peck the eyes out of new born lambs in the field
They are total cunts. The Tories of the bird world.