Learning the Birds: A Midlife Adventure

by Susan Fox Rogers

"The thrill of quiet adventure. The constant hope of discovery. The reminder that the world is filled with wonder. When I bird, life is bigger, more vibrant." That is why Susan Fox Rogers is a birder.  Learning the Birds  is the story of how encounters with birds recharged her adventurous spirit.   When the birds first called, Rogers was in a slack season of her life. The woods and rivers that enthralled her younger self had lost some of their luster. It was the song of a thrush that reawakened Rogers, sparking a long-held desire to know the birds that accompanied her as she rock climbed and paddled, to know the world around her with greater depth. Energized by her curiosity, she followed the birds as they drew her deeper into her authentic self, and ultimately into love. 
 
In  Learning the Birds , we join Rogers as she becomes a birder and joins the community of passionate and quirky bird people. We meet her birding companions close to home in New York State's Hudson Valley as well as in the desert of Arizona and awash in the midnight sunlight of Alaska. Along on the journey are birders and estimable ornithologists of past generations―people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Florence Merriam Bailey―whose writings inspire Rogers's adventures and discoveries. A ready, knowledgeable, and humble friend and explorer, Rogers is eager to share what she sees and learns.
 
Learning the Birds  will remind you of our passionate need for wonder and our connection to the wild creatures with whom we share the land. 

Genres: Birds, Nonfiction, Nature, Audiobook, Biography

320 pages, Hardcover

Published April 15, 2022

About the author

I am the author of MY REACH: A HUDSON RIVER MEMOIR, to be published by Cornell University Press in September 2011. In this memoir, I explore the Hudson River from my kayak. As I encounter snapping turtles and great blue heron, visit crumbling ice houses and cement factories, you will learn about the rich natural and built history of this river. In the process I also tell my own story of family and loss.
In addition to MY REACH, I am the editor of eleven book anthologies including Solo: On Her Own Adventure, Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild and Alaska Passages: 20 Voices from Above the 54th Parallel, and Antarctica: Life on the Ice. I teach creative writing at Bard College--the creative essay, nature writing and a course on the Hudson. I live in the village of Tivoli."

Reviews

[Eli Knapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Fox Rogers begins her book with a quote from Aristophanes: “You have learnt from the birds and continue to learn.” Well, after reading this deeply personal engagement with birds and birders, I steal from Aristophanes: I have learnt from Rogers and continue to learn. Sensing a gem, I saved this book for a quiescent mid-summer spell and was so glad I did. Each essay felt like an updraft, propelling me up and out of my life and into Susan’s. She’s a rare bird, somehow able to live and analyze her life simultaneously. The result is a seamless narrative of humility, insight, and an incredible awareness to the birds and the curious people that obsess over them.

Master of the essay, Rogers left me staring into the middle distance, rolling a new thought over while savoring a new factoid. A case in point: “Dawn Chorus.” In this essay (my favorite), Rogers taught me about all about FDR, a president I never knew beyond fireside chats and The New Deal. In just a few short pages, Rogers made FDR relatable, retracing his little-known presidential bird outing to Thompson Pond. By the end, I wanted to listen to sora, buy an FDR biography, and rise with the dawn. Thompson Pond, here I come!

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly charming account of how the author became passionate about birding without quite making it past the line into obsession, as it often happens with this hobby. Deeply personal and full of intimate details about her relationship with Pete, with whom she blossomed as a birder, even if their relationship didn't eventually work out Rogers brings the reader into the field and her heart, with contagious enthusiasm about birds. No European Starlings were reviled in the writing of this book!

[Em Setzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

All around beautiful, worthwhile book. Studded with moments of profundity, carried on the through-line of birds and the world.

[KC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be somewhat partial to this author ... but, that doesn't change the fact that I love her writing. The beautiful way that memoir and research are intertwined in this book made for a captivating read. Definitely a book that a diverse audience would enjoy!

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never thought a book about birding would hold my attention, but it did. Very well written. Lots of good historical details.

[Sheila Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Learning the Birds. As a bird lover myself, Susan's descriptions of the birds were wonderful. Watching her human relationships change with the birds was fantastic! Excellent book

[cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an unexpectedly enjoyable book for me. I picked it up not knowing much other than it was about a woman discovering birding at midlife and felt rewarded by a memoir that held much more. I send myself quotes as I read, by taking a picture and using the new photo to text feature on my iPhone. This was the quote for this book.

"And those rain-soaked tents set the frivolousness of our birding into uneasy relief. This was not the first time I had meditated on the privilege of birding, but it was the first time I felt confronted by it.

As I ticked through unsettling emotions, my solace was that had I not been birding I would never have seen these homeless people. Birding showed me not just the birds, but the world that we share with them. Witnessing the lives of these people in their tents was important, a step in understanding; only with understanding can change begin.

I often ended a day birding at once elated by all I had seen and also troubled that once abundant birds are now teetering toward extinction.

The ways that we have challenged birds left me angry and frustrated.

Great joy comes, as we know, with great pain. Birding in a city was leaving me less elated and now mulling over the ways we have challenged our own species. Not that I hadn't thought about, read about, talked about these challenges before, but the birding lens added something.

When looking at a bird, nothing else matters; there's no past, no future, only the perfect present. It's much like being in the presence of a great love, nothing but being there, together, matters. To train that eye on people, I maintained that same focus, but the present wasn't perfect. Neither were the future or the past. What remained was a sense of affection as, for a moment, I saw these people who were as unknown to me as the birds.

The birds led me to feeling a greater compassion."

[Stevie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Summary: An account of a woman who gets into birding later “in middle age”.

What I liked: The narrator initially describes bird song as colors, which I found fascinating. The writing style was very engaging (her day job was as an instructor of nature writing, which is one of my favorite genres to read, so that worked out in my favor). I also enjoyed following along with the narrator as she finds her identity in the birding world. There are so many ways to bird (in the way that all hobbies/passion projects have many side quests), and it was fun to learn about them from a novice’s perspective and to see what opinions she forms about them.

I loved all the different journeys birding took her on, and that she did ultimately find people to bird with who were more her vibe. I also liked that we see the author become more confident in the knowledge she had as she becomes a mentor to someone else.

Didn’t Love: Peter (sorry Peter). I acknowledge that he is important in the narrator’s birding education but, as a person who adventures outdoors frequently, I understand the importance of choosing the right companion and it became clear to me pretty quickly that he and I would not be compatible, and that made interactions with him hard to read at times. I also didn’t love the the scarcity of women in the birding world, but that is not the fault of the author, simply an observation she makes.

Bonuses: I loved the reference to primary texts that aligned with the narrator’s story, ones that were local to her regular haunts, and ones that corresponded while she was abroad. I especially enjoyed that she tried to find source material written by women (I’ve added them to my to-read list). Reading about the author’s experience has given me the confidence that I could also learn to identify birds.

[Cindy Dyson Eitelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good memoir! And with birds! Ms. Rogers seems to have gone through several minor obsessions in her life, from climbing to kayaking to birding, and this is an excellent story of how birding kept her whole in what might have been the slowdown years of her life. Or so it seemed to me.

It's written very honestly, and that makes it superb as a memoir. And it's written with a light touch, which makes it fun to pick up and hard to put down. She starts off telling of her on-again-off-again love affair with a birding guru, and while I couldn't help but hope for them to stay together, I wasn't nearly as tied up in that question as in whether or not she'd find her next bird.

I don't think I'll ever be as obsessed of birding as she, but as she points out, she herself will never be as obsessed as other people she knows. She's comfortable on a continuum and happy to see what she can and share the locations with anyone interested. It seems that a lot of birding enthusiasts are like that--generous and helpful to an excess. I've had help from strangers, both wanted and unwanted but usually the latter, I'm embarrassed to admit. Mostly I want to figure it out on my own. Which is not the "birder" way or even the best way, sometimes. But I've learned that it's the only way I really learn.

But I digress. This book is really enjoyable, bright and lovely and written like a charm. And, of course, full of birds.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful, immersive look at the depth and power of birding. Susan writes a series of vignettes about simultaneously falling in love with a birder and falling in love with birding, interspersing snippets of the history of birding and famous birders with compelling nature writing about her trips from Paris to Alaska to "learn the birds." I picked up this book after seeing her speak near my home in the Hudson Valley, it was especially enjoyable because she wrote often about the environment and birds in my area. While it felt a little long and overly descriptive in parts, each chapter is a contained vignette and if you're interested in learning more about birding, it's a wonderful way to dive in. Reading "Learning the Birds" it has fundamentally changed the way I see, hear and experience birds in my environment—which I imagine is the ultimate goal of Susan's empathetic stories.

[Jerry Hillyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of good stories in this book about birds and birders. I sympathize with Rogers' annoyance at the senseless killing of birds early birders engaged in for 'collecting'. There's a lot of good stories in here about various birds and her adventures to find the birds. What aggravated me was using birds as a metaphor for some sort of self-discovery and all the relationship nonsense. This might not be the best first book of Rogers' to read. I think she tried too hard, and her points were lost on me because of that effort. I'm actually a lot closer to 2.5 stars than I am to 3, but 2 seemed a bit low.

[Kidlitter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some lovely writing, some lovely birds - a great read for anyone who is looking for inspiration on finding new love, new pursuits, new knowledge of themselves. If at times one feels a little trapped in the privilege of Rogers' ability to pursue birding as a balm for her midlife crisis, she is such a beautiful craftsperson of words and images when seized by avian passion, and gosh knows the birds need all the help they can get. I did learn quite a bit and am full of admiration for her remaking a passing interest into a virtual obsession that makes her happy - may that be available for all.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

For most of Susan Fox Rogers' life she had noticed birds in the way that many people do, peripherally, paying little attention unless they were bright and close and loud. In middle age, a beautiful birdsong coming in her window caught her attention and sent her down the road to discovering not only the source of that particular song (a veery), but also to developing a deep interest in all birds. Told in essays, this is the story of her first few years as a birder.

[Peg Lotvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series of essays on birds and birding is actually a love letter to Peter or was until they broke up. Peter is not introduced in the book but I belong to the same birding group as Susan F. Rogers so I know Peter. Cool book about adventures learning specific birds in places around the country, Arizona, New York, Alaska. There is also a lot of introspection about life decisions and how they affect both Susan's life and maybe yours too.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook of this delightful birding memoir, told in essay format. As a birder, I found it easy to relate Rogers' gradual transformation from casual birdwatcher to hard-core bird nerd. I also really enjoyed all the ornithological history peppered throughout the book. It left me wanting to know more, and wishing I had a hard to copy to use as a reference for all the notable birders Rogers mentions.

[Ileana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was such an enjoyable read. I found myself totally identifying with the writer as she recounts the excitement of seeing a particular bird, and the nervousness of sending a message to other birds about a rare sighting. She shares how birds have disappear, how we impact the birds as well as anecdotes of how passionate birders can be.

[Savannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy to hear Susan among many at AWP in Philly and to learn of this book. This book feels like being in her company. To return to.
Thank you Three Hills and Cornell University Press: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/...

[Evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A delightful book about the discovery and joy of bird watching. The book is comprised of short essays about the places the author birded and people who accompanied her. Lots of interesting bits of history about birds in the USA.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a phenomenal book to read in the doldrums of January. Susan Fox Rogers is a gifted captivating writer and a much more accomplished birder than me! Like another reviewer noted, each chapter lifted me up and made me feel joyful and inspired in some way. This may well be my favorite book of 2023.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Fox Rogers shares her path to becoming a birder and provides an eloquent celebration of the birds living near her home in New York State's Hudson Valley. Her descriptions of some well known and less well known (and female) birders through U.S. history are interesting additions.

[Alice Debarre · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonder this book is. Even for the non-birders, you will be taken in by the exploration and beauty that the author unveils throughout the chapters. Beautifully written and transportive.

[Lisa Pool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent writing and very informative. 4-1/2 stars ⭐️

[Karen Klimowitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Turns out this is an essay format - somewhat new to me. Take some effort.

Not much in the way of "plot", but a fairly interesting deep dive into the world of birding, past to present.