My interest is in sharing and interjecting a style and approach to an experience of the natural world that leads toward an understanding of and sympathy for the natural world that is based on direct experience of wild places and wildlife in a non-meddlesome or non-intrusive manner. It involves a retraining of the mind and a patience of spirit rarely cultivated in scientific world for a number of reasons, many of them legitimate. In the mainstream birding community this approach is relatively non-existence. It is not my intention here to criticize other approaches to the study of the natural world but to share a style handed down to me as a young man and one that is my learned preference. It is not my interest to debate the legitimacy of the style as it is not my desire to change the minds of those who may not share my enthusiasm.

One distinguishing characteristic of this approach is the desire to know and experience wild life in much the same way we know and experience domestic animals. It is an approach that distinguishes between knowing about wild life and knowing them as individuals. It is an approach that knows through personal experience that, for example, even individual wild birds of the same species reflect distinguishing behavioral traits. For example, one female Red-eyed Vireo shows a want to care for her nest structure more than another. One female American Redstart shows little tolerance for the presence of her mate during nest building and incubation while another shows great tolerance of his presence as he sings in a perch just above her. There are a multiple of these idiosyncrasies between individual birds of the same species just as there are a multitude of behavioral traits reflected between individual beagles for example. We clump wild things into these pigeon holed overall species traits and forget individual birds make up these species ... it is my desire to know them as individuals and for them to know me.

I call this approach "stumping" because it is all about sitting in one place or one small area for hours, days, and/or weeks observing and experiencing the behavior of one or a few species and entering into a relationship with them in much the same way of people do with pets. It is about knowing individual birds or wild things and them getting to know you ... intimately to the point of relative comfort.

Stumping

Stumping, as a bird watching or nature observation style, is simply defined as spending more time stationary then mobile. The stumper is intent on becoming a part of his or her natural surroundings to experience and know the behaviors of living things. He or she strives toward a non-intrusive study of the natural world based by entering into a mutually sympathetic relationship between the stumper and wild birds and other wild things around him or her.

Nesting

Nesting is the activity of manifesting and observing the nest cycle of wild birds. Nesting is an extension of the activity of stumping. It is a specific form of stumping focused on nesting wild birds. Like stumping, the nester seeks a non-meddling approach to nest discovery. The nester does not “locate” a nest as a result of actively moving through a location in an intrusive manner. He or she is not a treasure hunter … rather … he or she harmonizes with the wild place … not an intruder.

The nester, like the stumper, will spend hours, days, and/or weeks in one place acclimating himself or herself to a wild place and waiting on the wild things around him or her to acclimate to his or her presence. In this way the nester does not locate a nest it manifests through patient direct and open experience of unaffected or natural behavioral patterns. Intuition and experience combine to foster manifestation conditioned by patient waiting and anticipation. The nester enters into a relationship with the birds and other wild things based on a sympathetic understanding through experience.

Keith F. Saylor
Feb 02, 2008