On the Wing

When I met my husband’s parents in 1984, they picked us up at LaGuardia, then headed south to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn to take us birdwatching. Perhaps they thought that the effort involved in trying to distinguish different types of shorebirds would diffuse any tension inherent in the encounter, or maybe they didn’t want to waste a long drive without going somewhere more interesting than the airport. Whatever the reason, I was immediately hooked.

I was already a lover of long walks and an admirer of avian fauna, but it had never occurred to me to unite these pleasures by bringing along a copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of North America and a pair of binoculars. Whereas golf is held by many to be “a good walk spoiled” (an observation usually attributed to Mark Twain), birdwatching transforms aimless strolling into purposeful activity, thereby making a good walk even better.

Until we had children some eight years later, my...