Sometimes the world is exhausting. Birdwatching offers a few modest remedies.
- It gives you an excuse to avoid social interaction
- It allows you to become unreasonably excited about meaningless details
- It lets you stalk prey without any actual skill
- It makes every walk slightly less pointless
- You can become a collector without filling your house with junk
- It lets you care intensely about something that doesn’t care about you
Mostly, it’s just looking elsewhere.
Photo: Black-headed Gull, Dali, Yunnan, March 2026
Kai has lived in Shanghai for 22 years. He only started birding after moving to China, so he is far more familiar with Chinese birds than the ones back in his native Germany. As a birder, he considers himself strictly average and tries to make up for it with photography, which he shares on a separate website. Alas, most of the photos are pretty average as well.
He hopes that few clients of his consulting firm—focused on China’s chemical industry—ever find this blog, as it might raise questions about his professional priorities. Much of his time is spent either editing posts for 10,000 Birds or cleaning the litter boxes of his numerous indoor cats. He occasionally considers writing a piece comparing the two activities.
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