In which I become a birder.

A lot of the time I spend in the woods is solitary—I’m an introvert to my core and so usually in my long, slow meanderings through the forest, I like to be ugly in peace.

But every so often, it’s worth remembering that I’m, like, a person, and that people are fundamentally social beings. And also, it’s really nice to spend time with nerds who are nerdy about the same things you are. And for me, that means trees and nature and birds.

Which is why I was stoked when a friend announced a birding walk at Ottawa’s Mud Lake, through her organization Dehors Ensemble. Though it’s right in the city, Mud Lake is an important wetlands site that attracts a shitload of birds and, therefore, a shitload of birders.

The group of us, armed with everything from binoculars and iPhones to cameras with gigantic lenses I only dream of owning, traipsed into the woods and along the frozen waterways, looking for creatures. The experienced birders in our group said it was a quiet day, but we still saw chickadees, crows, woodpeckers, nuthatches, squirrels, turkeys (in the city!), and—once we reached the open water just downstream of the Ottawa River’s Deschênes Rapids—many, many ducks.

Together, the group of us squealed over chickadees’ feet and nuthatches’ weird little honk calls and turkeys running and slipping on ice (very funny, highly recommend witnessing this once in your life). Getting home and seeing how many photos actually turned out well—a wildlife photographer I am not—was the cherry on top of a lovely day.