The Endgame

Newsletter #94 - Three generations and a bunch of birds

Toronto, January 26, 2025

Three generations and a bunch of birds

Rosie in the Costa Rican rainforest

The most popular Endgame that I’ve written (measured by the number of views) is #66, “The naming of generations.” (I don’t know why this post was so popular.) I began that newsletter by asking, “What does the epithet ‘Okay, boomer’ imply when directed at a martini-swilling almost-octogenarian by a young guy wearing a baseball cap backwards?” Later on in the essay I wrote, “Every generation has been given a label. Boomers, Generation X, Millenials, Generation Z, Generation Alpha. Why is this labelling thought to be a good idea?”

Now there are new guidelines for the naming of generations, promulgated by the Pew Research Center. Exciting news: Generation Beta has been added to the list. If you were born in 2025, so the guidelines tell us, you are a member of Gen Beta. (The guidelines perceptively point out that at the moment the average age of Gen Beta is “0.”) I ask again, is this labelling a good idea? All it does is suggest and accentuate distinctions and differences that may not really exist. Put another way, it’s stupid.

The interaction between generations has been on my mind recently. I went to Costa Rica for a week with my daughter, Gabrielle, and granddaughter, Rosie. We were three generations thrown together, with an age spread of almost 70 years, an inter-generational laboratory. In a Tripadvisor review of the wonderful resort where we stayed (Vista Celestial, near Uvita), my daughter wrote, in an otherwise rapturous review of the place: “[F]or someone of my father's age and anxiousness, there could be a couple of design improvements: specifically, a grab-bar for the showers, and more railings for the descent from main level to villas.” My daughter’s review of her father was more tentative than her review of the resort.

I’m elderly, yes, but anxious? Come on, I know some youngish people who are more anxious than me, and anyway, anxiety is often an appropriate and prudent reaction to a tricky situation. Although, I have to admit, increased free-floating anxiety does seem to accompany advancing age, at least in my case, and I don’t like it. I wrote about this in Endgame #52. Maybe it’s time for me to give mindfulness and meditation another try.

My anxiety aside, I thought the inter-generational thing worked out pretty well in Costa Rica. Gen X and Gen Z went ziplining. The Silent Generation went bird-watching. There were many good-natured inter-generational conversations by the pool and many a laugh as we consumed “beverages” together.

Gen X and Gen Z share beverages

An anxious member of the Silent Generation self-medicates

Regular readers of the Endgame will know that I’ve taken up bird watching. Needless to say, I’ve started a life list (that’s what people like me do). Before I went to Costa Rica I had a modest 29 species on the list. In one week, mostly on a hillside in the Puntarenas rainforest, overlooking the Pacific, I identified (with the help of Merlin Bird ID) an astonishing 39 new species. They included: the Long-billed Gnatwren; Lesson’s Motmot; the Great Tinamou; the Chestnut-backed Antbird; the Slaty-tailed Trogon; the Yellow-faced Grassquit; the Social Flycatcher; and the Buff-throated Saltator. I saw some birds from a boat in mangrove swamps: They included a startlingly beautiful pair of Scarlet Macaws. Some I observed on a hillside ramble with Alex, a gentle and patient local bird-watching guide. Alex took this photograph of a Fiery-billed Aracari:

For some reason, I particularly fell in love with the Crested Guan. It’s a big bird with a long tail. It’s striking, but not exactly beautiful. Hopping about high up in trees, it doesn’t seem to realize it’s large and ungainly.

Crested Guan

I had two good sightings of the Crested Guan. I observed it carefully. I felt simpatico with this creature. We were birds of a feather.