by Michael Lombardo
illustration by Joe Scordo

Birdwatching is so much like skating. The jargon alone—a clean back 180 switch 5-0 on an out ledge is, in bird terms, something like an early-vocalizing Black-headed Grosbeak at your patch. The spark bird—the one that gets you hooked—is as vividly recallable as a first-landed kickflip. And to glimpse a bird you’ve only seen pics of, to log a lifer, recalls nothing so much as landing that long hucked switch tre.

Both skating and birdwatching make you look at the world differently—really look at it—scan it, assess it, prize its overlooked potential. As I move through the world, I scan for remnant nature, spots for wild birds, the same way I rubberneck every single unfamiliar plaza or curb cut. And by noticing and inhabiting the real world, both birders and skaters refuse mainstream culture—resist the phone zombies’ virtual realities: the addictive screens in which our lives are increasingly trapped and tangled. But more than that, both birding and skating demand a kind of embodied attention—a surrender to flow. Not just seeing, but moving in sync with something larger. Some quasi-spiritual, unseen energy that skaters—and birders—know is real.

Take tricks over a pyramid. When I was starting out, I’d muscle through—overthinking every twitch and push, trying to time my trick-to-launch just right. Only later did I learn: you have to stop forcing and start gliding. Let your body join the energy of the ramp. Same with birding. You drop back into your animal self. Shed the social scripts, the mental clutter. You stop narrating and start sensing. Your ears stretch out. Your eyes rewild. You’re not looking at nature anymore—you’re part of it.

And then there are the birds themselves. Species as numerous as trick selections. Your Rock Pigeons might be your ollies. A Red-tailed Hawk, a shove-it. Some, like invasive House Sparrows who displace native woodpeckers and bluebirds, are even illegal. Whether tricks or birds, naming and mastery are more intuitive than you’d expect. (The universal life force guarantees this.)

So many species are findable in Southern California. And, it turns out, everywhere in the U.S. Before I tried, I couldn’t see them—just like a Karen glued to her phone cannot see that the Sunrise ledges are sacred stones. You just have to tap in.

Notice a bird and, at long last, something else bears comparison: In their darting, soaring, buoyant defiance of gravity—they know. They know the wild, alive, present skater, who kisses the edge of flight, who denies gravity, if only for a second, is kin.