Tour in Iraq for the birds

The conflict in Iraq conjures images of violence. It would seem a soldier’s journal from time spent in the Mideast would be filled with musings on car bombs, bloodied victims and gunfights.

Sgt. Jonathan Trouern-Trend, a medic with the 118th Area Support Medical Battalion, wrote about birds.

Really, he did. And people read his online journal religiously.

Selections from it will be published this May as “Birding Babylon,” from Sierra Club Books and University of California Press.

“To read about something as universally familiar as the migration of birds, or watching ducks in a pond, fulfilled a need to know that something worthwhile was happening, even in the midst of suicide bombings,” Trouern-Trend writes.

“Knowing that the great cycles of nature continue despite what people happen to be doing is reassuring, I think.”

Trouern-Trend, a self-proclaimed naturalist, had been an avid bird watcher for 24 years before he was sent overseas with the Connecticut National Guard for a year, stationed at Camp Anaconda, north of Baghdad.

He said the base was a “hive of military activity, but also a refuge of sublime natural beauty.”

The juxtaposition of news reports on death tolls with Trouern-Trend’s observations on nature is jarring. His toothsome and lilting style seems out of place, but in a good way, and it’s hard to imagine he’s actually writing from a war zone.

“I went on a short walk around the living areas with one of our doctors,” he writes. “In some large eucalyptus trees we saw a small group of white-cheeked bulbuls. One of the birds was displaying – lowering its head, drooping its wings, and fanning its tail.”

Trouern-Trend saw about 122 different species of birds, not to mention countless types of plants, during his tour in Iraq. He said he hopes to return one day armed only with binoculars and a camera.

For now, he’s observing the birds in his home near Marlborough, Conn. with his wife and five children.