Why I Post So Many Bird Photos on Facebook

Last fall, leading up to the 2020 general election and being halfway through chemotherapy, I changed my online habits. I sorely needed the energy I’d been funneling into following every twist and turn of word and deed in a maddening political situation, as it played out on Facebook and in news sources. I completely stopped reposting or commenting on anyone else’s Facebook posts or reading any I knew would upset me, and I quit giving mental fuel to the fires Trump and his partners in treason were setting all around us. As it turned out, these were surprisingly easy habits to break, and I almost immediately felt less frazzled.

After several months, I gingerly began reading news articles that touched on politics, but I mostly read headlines; I was much more judicious about which and how many articles I read. (I still am.) I picked up Facebook again, but with a different tenor. Although I read my friends’ comments, I never post or comment on political issues. I especially avoid starting or engaging in any arguments.

Then what’s the point, you ask? What else is Facebook for? Well, every day I post Gary Larson cartoons and pictures of birds, and occasionally a joke or photo of other wildlife. Period.

The reason I post Larson cartoons needs no explanation. If a cartoon makes me feel good, I think that it might make others feel good too. Nothing mysterious about that.

But my posting slews of bird photos is different. Although as a child I was intrigued by birds, I’ve hardly thought about them since, oh, the fourth grade. I’m not and never have been a birdwatcher. I don’t know one bird from another when I encounter them. And yet I’ve become known among my Facebook friends as a bird enthusiast, the way some folks are known as obsessive cat or dog lovers.

Why this fascination with bird photos, and the occasional striking photo of an ant or octopus or frog? Simple. In my repost of a Smithsonian photo montage of extreme close-ups of wild things, I wrote, “Have you forgotten your sense of wonder at the complexity, beauty, and ferocity of the world around us? Here's a reminder.”

My many bird posts are curated by my own sense of wonder. The variety of color, markings, feather arrangements, feet, bills, and shapes within the avian class is extraordinary—almost unbelievable. I focus on birds because their diversity is astonishing. If I see a photo of one that I react to with “How striking!,” for whatever reason, I post it.

I’m awed by the vast array of creatures, avian and otherwise, who leap or flap or scuttle around, over, or under us, even if I only encounter them in photographs. Every day I’m amazed at the complexity, beauty, and ferocity that surrounds us, despite our failure to appreciate or even notice our fellow beings.

My posts are intended as a reminder that these creatures are connected to us. How we live, or fail to live, affects their very existence. And vice versa (although we are less likely to reflect on or even acknowledge that). We all have a niche. We all compose this world, and the way we move through it together matters. Focusing on the existence that connects us, appreciating rather than fuming against differences that too often divide us, has alleviated a lot of the tension that has thrummed through me in this unsettling, harrowing period. I’m hoping that shifting the spotlight, if only for a moment, also helps others, if only a few.