Bird-watching as a philosophical exercise: learning to love the common and the rare
For a while now, but especially in January 2026, I have been indulging in the pleasures of bird-watching. It is simply amazing. It’s been a constant and easily accessible source of awe & wonder. Many people have described the philosophical and spiritual relevance of this activity, and I would like to add my voice to this chorus. In my opinion, bird-watching is an exercise in the dynamic nature of wonder.
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Quite a few people have attempted to nail down what is distinctly philosophical about the hobby of bird-watching. Someone pointed out that, like philosophy, it “is an exercise in seeing sameness and difference”. Someone else remarked that bird-watching is a sort of communion with an alien reality, a strange mind & elemental force, and thus it is philosophical, but different from the usual kind of philosophical speculation. Other pertinent remarks include the idea that “the inaccessibility of birds is the heart of their marvelousness.” and also the idea that birds teach us mindful prayer: “to be still like the owl and to rest in the presence of the provider’s care”.
I thought about those remarks and I thought about my own practice of bird-watching. It made me want to take a crack at describing the “philosophical engine” that is purring deep within this quaint little hobby of ours. For this purpose, let me tell you about the two initiations into bird-watching that I had. It is specifically the dual nature of this initiation that I want to talk about. I think that those two different “beginnings” illuminate the philosophical love & wonder that fuels this practice.
The first initiation moment happened in the context of my many mindfulness walks. I was living in Paris, walking around, and trying to be as present and non-judgemental as I possibly could. So when I perceived that a bunch of pigeons – those “dirty flying rats” – were “in my way”, it gave me pause, and prompted me to correct my wrongful perception. I decided, there and then, that I now loved pigeons. I remember thinking of it as a defiant decision. Since I could see how arbitrary it was to hold pigeons in contempt, I thought “why not do the opposite: it’s just as arbitrary, but it will make me feel better”. I was very right. Imagine seeing an animal that you love, everyday, in great quantity, all around you! It did not feel forced: they are absolutely lovely to the non-prejudiced eye. It felt like a loving-kindness meditation.
My nesting partner (a human) told me an anecdote that illustrates well what I was defying when I made that decision. For several mornings, my partner had heard a bird song that felt truly magical. The sound was all the more enchanting as it epitomized a time and place: it was the early morning melody of sleeping-in during one of those glorious childhood summer vacations; a delightful experience. So they asked around to try to identify who that magnificent bird was. When the person they asked finally understood what they were talking about, their answer was disenchanting: “Oh that? That’s just a pigeon.” The information itself wasn’t disappointing, but the tone was. The tone was one of disbelief and contempt. It was disbelief that my partner could describe a mere pigeon as something so special and magical, and so they adopted a “ha! yeah sorry to burst your bubble” kind of attitude. The worst part about it is that the contempt was infectious, and indeed caused my partner to think nothing of the magical bird: “oh ok, it’s nothing then”. An answer that matched their enthusiasm could have made this bird their favourite bird, no matter how humble the lowly pigeon may seem!
The second initiation moment came years later. You have to understand that in the years between deciding that I love pigeons and this other moment, I was not a bird-watcher. I loved birds but we had no real relationship to speak of: I did not care to look at them all that much. In fact, I can say that I very pointedly wasn’t a bird-watcher, with the same defiance that made me decide that I loved pigeons. You see: I used to think that knowledge about birds and trees, and what-not, would mess with my spiritual nature walks. I thought it would hinder me.
With non-dual spirituality, you are trying to pay attention to how the world presents itself to you prior to hastily judging what you are seeing. You refrain from using the chatty evaluative part of your mind. Instead, you encounter the raw experience of being. And so I had this (misguided) idea in my mind that a botanist (for example) would have all kinds of obstacles to their mindfulness practice: they could not help but think of all the latin names of the plants, and to evaluate the health, rarity, and utility of the trees, etc… I didn’t want that to happen to me, and this provided an excuse to not being interested in that sort of thing. As it is with botany, so it is with bird expertise.
This all changed one day, when I spotted a massive and haunting bird by the side of the road. My partner was driving, I was on the passenger side, and the bird felt so close to me beyond that passenger door. I exclaimed “Wow! I just saw a bird, but… but... It looked like an eagle or something!” I couldn’t believe it, and as a good friend, my partner did not shut down my enthusiasm, on the contrary. The bird was not an eagle but a common buzzard. It was a rare sight for me, and it looked massive to me. My astonishment came from the fact that I had never realized we could meet cool birds of prey around the city! This is rare! This is no pigeon!
Eagle eyed-readers will have spotted the apparent contradiction. On the one hand, I am saying that we can love the common because it is common. On the other hand, I am also saying that we can love the rare because it is rare. But how could both be the case? There seems to be a tension between the two. Truth be told, that tension was already present in each individual case or “initiation”. Let’s examine them more closely.
In the first instance, if we adopt the attitude of “all birds are special”, then aren’t we running into the paradox of “if everything is special, it means that nothing is”? The common/rare contrast collapses. This paradox is perhaps not enough to establish that we should not love pigeons, but it might be enough to establish that if you do love pigeons, it is not really in virtue of loving the common as such. It is in virtue of something else (what that something else is, we don’t exactly know right now).
In the second instance, if we adopt the attitude of “something is admirable because it is rare” we run into another problem: rarity is relative. A bird that you find rare might be common to someone else, and vice-versa. Once we find out that admiration is a subjective phenomenon in this way, we might have scruples. After all, if from a God’s eye view (an absolute point of view) all birds are common, who are we to play favourites like this? It feels arbitrary. Feeling the inadequacy of our relative point of view, we might want to broaden the net of what we consider lovely, but, as we have established, it would sound self-contradictory to say that “all birds are special”, so it must be in virtue of something else that we love all these birds (what that something else is, we still don’t know).
I propose to flip this problem on its head. It is the objector who is inconsistent, not the person who has wonder in their hearts. It is not a logical dilemma but a problem of bad faith. In other words, what we are seeing here is an objector who is equally comfortable deflecting the feeling of wonder with one objection and its opposite, even though each objection should only be as strong as their commitment to stick to it, which should preclude raising the opposite objection. The person who has wonder in their hearts will feel wonder for the common and for the rare, whereas the objector will feel wonder for neither, even though their bad faith deflections imply that they will (in the opposite circumstances). The brand new and much more rational criteria of loveliness that they seem to be looking for will never be revealed. What could fill this role? The idea that birds are "useful" to us? That would not be love.
So, for example, the person who objects “oh that? That was just a pigeon!” implies that wonder would be the adequate feeling to feel if the bird in question was rare. But would that person actually feel wonder if the bird was rare? I don’t think so. Having not trained the muscle of wonder in common cases, they will be unable to feel it when the rare opportunity comes. Thus, in spite of what they are implying, they would also be the kind of person who would find it arbitrary and silly to admire a bird based on their rarity. They easily switch from one way of deflecting wonder to another.
To take another example, recall how my bird-watching practice remained superficial for as long as I agreed only in principle that all birds are wonderful. Back in those days, I would have raised bad faith objections too “Oh, so you are saying that this eagle is wonderful because it is rare, or you are saying that the pigeon, while common, is actually wonderful because of its amazing skills and past history with humans… Well, I for one, love them simply because they exist, and my love is unconditional.” I was sincere and I had some genuine love and wonder in my heart. Yet my words didn’t exactly match my behaviour. I didn’t have a love for birds as full and blossoming as I do now. I loved the idea of loving birds. I aspired to love birds as much as I could. But I didn’t yet fully love them for themselves; I loved them merely as an opportunity to be mindful. Having not trained the wonder muscle in the most awe-inducing cases, I had nothing to fuel me in the long run, day to day.
The objector thinks in a very “static” way. For them “wonder” is an abstract problem to solve, rather than a normal feeling that comes and goes. But wonder is dynamic in many ways. In Wonderstruck, Helen de Cruz showed that wonder is dialectical: when we encounter something striking, we feel wonder, and so we devise frameworks to try to explain the anomaly, to try to convert chaos into order... but in turn, those frameworks create more opportunities to notice striking anomalies (chaos!), pushing us to revise our frameworks, to see new anomalies, etc. It’s a cycle of curiosity. This cycle is the mother of philosophy.
I think wonder is also dynamic in another way. There’s two types of wonder, in my opinion: what I would like to call rare-wonder and real-wonder. Rare-wonder is what you feel when you encounter something exceptional, like a cool bird of prey. Real-wonder, on the other hand, is the feeling of amazement you can have towards the mere existence of a bird, any bird, and this requires breaking through the distracting familiarity and finally seeing their exceptional nature. I do not call it “real” to suggest that the other kind is inauthentic, but because it is a feeling of amazement for the reality of things.
In truth, I am becoming more and more convinced that rare-wonder and real-wonder constitute a virtuous cycle. To feel one of them fully, you must also embrace the other. Conversely, rejection of one is actually the rejection of both. It is merely a way to procrastinate wonder forever.
In conclusion, bird-watching is uniquely well suited to providing you this cycle of wonder. It takes you through familiar environments with renewed attention. Its community of enthusiasts equips you with enough information and frameworks to make the slightest anomaly appear incredibly striking. And finally, it is an activity replete with quick encounters of all kinds: encounters with the common and encounters with the rare. Something exciting or lovely is bound to happen! All in all, it is a truly wonderful activity. With how it shifts the way we pay attention to the world, I am not surprised at all that so many people see fit to philosophize about this hobby.
(PS: On this blog, we explore a new philosophical exercise every month. For example, last time, we discovered the epistemic virtues of tarot card reading. And another time, we basked in the unspeakable bliss of jhana meditation. Take a look around the blog for more exercises!
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(10/02/2026)
Pierrick Simon
my email: lemiroirtranquille@outlook.fr
(do not hesitate to reach out)
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