Spark Bird: H. Jon Benjamin’s Bird Reports

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Spark Bird: H. Jon Benjamin's Bird Reports

Written by Mark Bramhill

Allison Wilson: This is BirdNote.

When the COVID pandemic started, comedian and actor H. Jon Benjamin and his family moved to a secluded house by a creek in upstate New York. And living there, he started to get really interested in birds:

H. Jon Benjamin: One, because there was very little for me to do — no offense to birders — uh, but there were a huge amount of beautiful birds on that property. There was a Great Blue Heron, and a family of eagles that were nesting right nearby... 

    [Bald Eagle calls]

H. Jon Benjamin: ... and I had never seen an eagle that close before. They would like, literally, like, fly right by, like an air show. That got me to start videotaping myself being excited about seeing birds. 

H. Jon Benjamin [in Bird Report video, sounding weepy]: Bird report, May 21st, 2020, three Bald Eagles soaring right over the house. 

H. Jon Benjamin: I did it, sort of, as a half joke to show my kid, who had actually left at that point. So I was spending a lot of time alone up there and I was going to send him a video of me being very excited about seeing this family of Bald Eagles. 

Allison Wilson: Jon kept making "bird report" videos on Twitter, sharing his growing love for birds in a unique and very enthusiastic way. And many people were delighted to see it. 

H. Jon Benjamin: There was one that got a lot of attention, I think when I did a dance to seeing a Northern Flicker.

    [Northern Flicker calls]

H. Jon Benjamin: [in Bird Report video, sounding ecstatic]: Bird report. July 19th, 2020. I saw my first Northern Flicker!!!

H. Jon Benjamin: I think I was in my underwear when I made the video. I didn't know the bird, so I was doing a lot of identifying through, you know, uh, Googling. When you're in a house, the same birds come around every day. I had a bird feeder, so, uh, catbirds were, were there. There was cowbirds, chickadees and finches. So there was a whole bunch of different varieties of birds, but the Northern Flicker, cause it's a bigger bird, it was just like, that was very exciting. Check it out if you want to see an older gentleman dancing excitedly about a bird.
 
Allison Wilson: These bird reports actually weren't the beginning of Jon’s interest in our feathered friends. 

H. Jon Benjamin: When I started doing the bird reports, I think I was actually tapping into some, a little bit of some rediscovery of a childhood interest in birds. And there's not a lot of things I have rediscovered like that. I hate the violin still to this day. My God, what an awful instrument. 

Allison Wilson: But birding has become special to him. 

H. Jon Benjamin: I've discovered it as, sort of, a solitary hobby, but, birding is like such a communal thing. Now I'll go out and go to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and meet a bunch of birders, and people can talk to me about birds all day. It's been such a helpful thing to have in the last few years for me, so I thank birds and birders for all they do. 

Allison Wilson: We have links to some of H. Jon Benjamin's many bird report videos on our website, BirdNote.org. I'm Allison Wilson.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Bald Eagle ML241234231 recorded by Devin Johnstone, and Northern Flicker ML84808 recorded by Wil Hershberger.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote December 2022
Narrator: Allison Wilson

ID# sparkbird-21-2022-12-23    sparkbird-21