Bird Island Through An Opera Glass

I don’t know anything about birding. I have only birded accidentally, when, by chance, I’ve glimpsed a jay on a walk through the woods or shooed a goose from my parents’ lawn, and I suppose, if you really want to get into it, that doesn’t quite count. My vocabulary for identification is limited mostly to pigeons, crows and bald eagles, and I’ve only ever encountered two of those in actual life. Now that I’m thinking of it, I’m not wholly confident that I could point out a sparrow. So, what moved me to participate in the great legacy of avian observation? Well, now, there is an air of romance about it, isn’t there? I rather liked the idea of it. I imagined myself, binoculared and notebooked, passing beneath the winter trees, ears attuned to the finest sound. I imagined gazing upward into the sun to spy a swooping egret, gliding deftly with the breeze. I imagined encountering a fellow birder on the path and saying things like, ‘A bit early for this time of year, wouldn’t you say?’ and, ‘I thought so, too,’ and, ‘Ha, ha, yes.’ I imagined all of these things. And so, with little ado and much aplomb, I got myself up early, dusted off an empty notebook and went a-birding.

Langeland is a small, flat vacation island at the southern tip of Denmark, an hour and a half from the closest major city. The residential section of the island consists primarily of beach houses, small, thinly built, and very close to the ocean. This development represents a tiny portion of the land. Most of it is beach. The part of the island that isn't beach is forest. Some beach spills into forest, and vice versa. Tough stalks of grass sprout from sand dunes, licking your calves like stinging insects. As you come closer to the shore, there are fewer of these grasses and the sand grows grainier, a graveyard of sand dollars and the gelatinous flesh of the jellyfish that are torn apart when they float too close to where the waves break. The water is beautiful and hostile, gray on sunny days and a glassy purple under clouds. It is excruciatingly cold all year round, but the Danes swim in it anyway.

I did not come to Langeland to swim. I came because the wind made me sleepy. When I came to Denmark as an eight year old, to live with my dad and his girlfriend, Pia, I experienced a case of what they referred to as "Advanced Jetlag". I inverted my sleep cycle, reading and drinking tea at night and napping for most of the day. This lasted for three months, and coming to Langeland was the only trick I knew for making myself sleep through the night.