There isn’t a real Russian word for a birder: all that exists is the bizarre word borrowed from English, бёрдер, comically pronounced “byorder”. Most Russians would not know this word, however, so when traveling in Siberia I was introduced as орнитолог, or ornithologist, but the two are not the same. An ornithologist is a type of biologist who specializes in birds, while a birder is a hobbyist who actively seeks birds. For those unacquainted with them, the habits of birders may seem a little strange, particularly the obsession with lists; keeping track of all the birds one has seen in their life seems realistic, for their home state, sure, but keeping a list for a five-mile radius circle around your house? Or of all birds seen from a bike? The possibilities are endless.

Obviously, when this trip started, I immediately began a list for Russia and for Moscow city, but I had another goal as well. Generally, lists are only of species, but I also wanted to visit as many different places as possible in Moscow. But hold up, is that actually a place? According to a reading we did (1), there is a big difference between space and place. I’m not going to attempt to outline the entire article, but very roughly the idea is that there are spaces, which exist in the actual world, such as geographical spaces, or in the cultural world, such as the strict set up of Orthodox churches. On the other hand, there are places, which are constructed in the mind of the individual, with the prime example being the home. I guess it’s probably safer to call them “locations”. Maybe if we look at some of them it will become apparent whether they qualify as place or not.

Some of the most far-flung locations that I’ve visited for birds in Moscow city proper are Izmailovsky Park, Bitsevsky Park, and Tsaritsyno. For the record, I’m not recommending any of these areas: Izmailovsky Park is unnervingly close to a rather bad neighborhood and Bitsevsky Park used to have a resident serial killer. But in any case, I ended up at each of these places at some point, and the way which I reacted to them had less to do with what was actually there and more to do with what I expected to be there. Somehow, eBird had given me the impression that Izmailovsky Park would have shorebirds. Thus, I looked for all of the bodies of water on the map, calculated how long it would take to cover them all, and set off, with my aim being to find sandpipers, plovers, and all those little birds that scurry at the water’s edge. Alas, none were to be found, but instead I did find a good assortment of forest birds and ducks.

On the subject of ducks, that was what I was supposed to find at Tsarytsino, and I did find a few, but there ended up being more at Kolomenskoye, where I wasn’t expecting any, and in addition to the ones I had at Izmailovsky the entire trip to Tsarytsino proved pointless in terms of ducks. However, I did find honey-buzzards there, a somewhat rare raptor*, in addition to some chattery little warbler-friends. Of all of these three locations, only a Bitsevsky Park did I find what I was expecting: many interesting species of forest birds abounded there. So what? Somehow, I was adding additional meaning to the bare geographical and cultural contexts of these parks by imagining them as containing certain birds, which in turn elicits a unique emotional response to me. I say unique, because other birders would react differently to the same birds, since they have seen different birds than me and had different experiences with them. Thus, I am sort of constructing place, but the place that I create to not correspond to the reality of what exists in that space. So in reality, these locations ended up remaining spaces which I traversed and by which I was often surprised or confused by what I saw since I was expecting something else.

On the other hand, the locations closer to home that I more often visit are much closer to actual places, since my sense of what is there is more acute. I have no clue whether a Bluethroat is expected at Tsaritsyno, but at the wasteland behind MSU I know that any singing flycatcher is almost certainly a Bluethroat, since they are common there. Each time I visit, I expect to see a Bluethroat, and while for that species I have yet to be disappointed after 11 trips there, for others I may see a species even only once, like the Little-Ringed Plovers. Yet I store the memory of that species and it becomes irrevocably linked in my mind to the location, even when it is not literally present in the space I think of it when I am there. This is the more accurate type of place which I establish after repeatedly birding an area; I have a very strong and individual emotional connection to each location; in fact, every part of every location.

When I walk through, say, the Park to the 50th anniversary of the revolution, I first pass the trees where I heard my first Greenish Warbler, a cause of excitement, then move to the pond where I should keep my eyes open for shelducks or Tufted Ducks, as they are often there, and recall how when it was frozen I used to see Caspian Gulls there. I then proceed to the river, where I remember the redpolls that were here in the winter and later how I saw an Icterine Warbler in a nearby bush. I think, well this patch should be a productive patch, a nice patch, And so on. These birds are not necessarily present in the moment, but I still feel emotions connected to them. Thus, these sorts of locations I consider more fully places. In any case, connecting to areas based on the birds present in them allows me to experience them in a different way, which is part of the reason that birding is so fulfilling for me.

 

*As a fellow Moscow birder has noted, raptors in Moscow proper are generally rare, even those that are abundant just an hour outside the city (e.g. Black Kite, Common Buzzard).

1 Relph, Edward. “Place and Space”. In Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Limited, 1976. Reprinted 2008. As with my last post, I want to express that I’m not trying to comment academically on serious works and subjects such as this (about which much has been written), and that my use of them is fairly light-hearted