My father was a birdwatcher so I am fascinated not so much by birds as by the people who watch them. Truth be told, I was never any good at birdwatching, a pastime that requires a good deal of patience and steady hand/eye coordination. Even being the child of a birdwatcher required patience. From time to time in my Manhattan youth, my father would take me to the Ramble in Central Park where  I would, patiently, watch him birdwatch and talk to other “birders.”

Occasionally my father would try to teach me how find a bird through the binoculars. “Find the bird with your eye,” I remember him saying. “And then quickly lift the binoculars to your eye.”

Again and again I’d try it. Again and again the bird would fly away before I got to see it magnified in those fancy Zeiss lenses.

I’d grow frustrated. He’d grow eager to use his binoculars for the serious pursuit of a seasonal bird. It just never added up to a strong lesson in birding I guess.

Those birders were a strange breed to my child’s eyes. We’d run into others of this breed in Central Park and their conversations with my father seemed to go on forever.  Serious, somewhat dour, single-minded in their ways, they wore khaki vests and pants with black binoculars swinging from their necks.

But love it he did. My father was a birder through and through. That’s why this weekly class in birdwatching in Prospect Park caught my eye.

Maybe you’ll have more success than I did at the art of finding a bird. You can  tour and learn about the 250 species of birds that call Prospect Park home. Meet at the Audubon Center. They meet every Saturday at noon.