A Birding Biker’s Bike on the bike trail
By Robert Jeffers, Los Angeles Audubon — Board Member Secretary
Whatever the world post-Covid looks like — for me, I hope it includes more birding and more biking. Living in a world that has had and continues to have so much taken by Covid, it has also drawn into relief those things which matter a lot, and for me, I can confidently list: being outside and being active. These are the two no-brainer actions that make my “matter-most” list. Whenever anyone asks me if I want to do an outside activity I answer, “Let’s go!” Under my breath daily I offer thanks into the universe for my family and my job. Yes, I have lost people, but I don’t take for granted that my immediate family has not been directly impacted despite some working in health care. And, knock on wood, my job and family are intact, because I have many students whose families have been ravaged. Virtual work in education is still work, but in the long term is staring at a screen and not actively going outside healthy?
Languishing in front of a computer with an ever-present electrical hum can’t be healthy. Sure, 5k, 27 “Retina” inches, and more than 14 million pixels provides a glorious digital palate from which to craft emails, Zoom with colleagues, and graze on YouTube for hours, but is it healthy over the long term? I don’t think so. My Covid-19 forced daily digital grind from Google Drive to Microsoft Office to Name-Your-Server has exponentially added to my logged screen hours and after more than 7 months I am almost absolutely convinced – this much screen and computer time can’t be healthy. These forced circumstances have not only generated a vocalized, daily appreciation for both my job and my privileges, which includes my former in-person, car-confined commute of an unholy 405-10-110 Freeway Trifecta. And, even this merciless commute, I think, may be healthier than unbound screen time. That I used to be able to see the world by being in the world, and critically, not through a virtual window, was a realization that made me look closer at those things I miss most about my B.C. (Before Covid) life: time in nature and exercise in the world.
Great Blue Heron perches on a Sea Curtain Trash Net Barrier in the Ballona Channel
As a birder and nature lover, I find myself hungry for nature – all day. Almost hourly, I physically wander up from the screen and step outside blankly staring at nature like one wanders to the refrigerator staring for something to snack. When I peer outside it’s like I’m peering in the refrige, I’m kinda looking for anything – house sparrow? Great! Eastern fox squirrel? I’ll take it. My near hourly constitutional outside (i.e. away from glowing panels) has only affirmed my belief in Richard Louv’s Nature Deficit Disorder and the need for interaction time with nature. Working from home has been a new experience for me – I’m a school administrator at a multi-site continuation school, so 5-days a week I would normally find myself traveling from San Pedro to San Fernando or from Venice to Boyle Heights. My job used to force me outside, to log north of 20,000 car miles a year, and to see a lot of the city, quickly. Now, I see a lot of my neighborhood, slowly. Getting deeply familiar with my neighborhood and yard has activated a renewed appreciation of what I do have and what I can access. And, I am so glad that I read Elizabeth Tova Bailey’s The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (Algonquin Books, 2016) prior to Covid, because it provided a powerful guide to seeing and observing what is right in front of me, and appreciating the magic of what is within reach. That said, Bailey’s book also helped me appreciate that I have the health and fitness to access nature – I’m not physically bound. This brings to me to the second opportunity I’ve missed since the start of Covid: outside exercise.
Throughout my life physical activity has always been a part of who I was and am. For sure I liked video games such as The Legend of Zelda, but I loved sports – team or individual. I’ve played basketball and tennis, trained in jiu jitsu and swam in college. Though I never thought of myself as especially active, evidence suggests that all the sports I gravitated toward involved near constant movement. At the beginning of Covid I stayed in place, but when I could run – I ran. And, the absence of cars on the road during Covid helped renew my interest in cycling. During high school and college, I loved mountain biking. A ride off road was entirely freeing – I wasn’t bound by asphalt and I could venture into a forest or on to a dirt path away from cars and people. Post college for a few years my interest in biking waned, but when I settled in Los Angeles as a teacher, I became fascinated with bikes again and had a strong interest in road bikes – I loved getting to places faster and farther away in less time. The road bike itch has been with me for several years now and has grown as has my interest in birding. And, it’s been the Covid inspired reframing of priorities and spotlighting of what I like and miss that made me realize that biking and birding fit.
A possible raft of Coots on the channel at sunrise
It’s been in front of me for years, but I never connected it – birding and biking work well together in part because they appeal to a similar sensibility, share a familiar ethos, and existing in similar spheres. Birding is an outside activity that really only requires looking, seeing, and listening. It celebrates nature. Sure, one can fabulously bird Bhutan, but one can fabulously bird the Ballona Creek Channel as well. I did that this very morning and encountered a fellow biking birder or birding biker. We talked owls and we may have spotted a Red-Shouldered Hawk. We chatted about commuting the city and birding the city, which further confirmed these to activities work very well together. Most biking takes place outside, can be enjoyed locally or far away, and even appeals to a similar obsessiveness on tools. Birding can invite preoccupation with fancy Swarovski binoculars, but can be enjoyed just as much with a second-hand pair of old binoculars handed down from a beloved uncle. Likewise, bikers can opt for a custom fitted, hand-made carbon fiber Italian road race frame like Sarto, but conversely one can have just as much fun on a cousin’s generation old, single gear, steel Schwinn if that’s what’s available. Essentially, I suspect it’s the activity in nature that draws people in and it’s partially why birding and biking work well together.
Possibly a Red Shouldered Hawk resting on a branch near the Ballona Ecological Preserve
For me, bicycling and birding provide healthy, quiet, environmentally conscious activities that keep me outside, largely honors nature, and in the case of biking, can get me to nature quickly. Importantly, biking facilitates birding. All I need to do is hop on my bike, ride and within 10 minutes I can watch the sunrise over the Ballona Creek Channel and bird the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve. From the bike I can quickly stop, reach into a backpack or handlebar bag, grab a camera or binoculars and bird away. For the birding aficionado who is willing to do a little more, bring a gravel bike or mountain bike to your favorite away from the city nature destination and in most cases, you’ll go farther, faster than any hiker on a trail. YouTube offers near countless “how-to” videos about bikepacking and while it’s not often connected, adding a trusted pair of binoculars to your gear seems about space consuming as a GoPro set up, and you’ll be birding in places that most couldn’t reach out of sheer logistics. Combining biking and birding offers opportunities to interact with nature doing two things I love, and they complement each other nicely.
So, am I more of a birding biker or a biking birder? Normally, I struggle to accept labels that pigeon-hole me as something because the fit is never entirely clean. But, I would say at this point in my life I am a birding biker. I use my bike to commute to work, but I’ll stop to identify a Great Blue Heron stoically fishing. In the coming months I plan to bring binoculars on a bikepacking trip with an old friend, and who knows maybe I’ll introduce birding to someone uninitiated to the pastime. Regardless, we’ll be outside, in nature, biking and birding.
Robert Jeffers is a Los Angeles Audubon Board member, high school assistant principal, and avid biking birder … or is it birding biker?