For a decade, upwards of 50-70 people have crowded into the Special Collections & Archives room of the Bowdoin Library in Maine each month to take part in an unusual tradition: watching a single page being turned in a book.
It’s not just any book, though. One of only 120 copies of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America is believed to still exist. Originally published in the 1800s, this masterpiece contains 435 large-scale, hand-drawn and painted birds in their natural habitats.
Turning only a single page of the book was originally intended to protect it from light exposure, but it has since turned into a wholesome community-building ritual. After the page gets turned, the library might hand off encased specimens of the new bird in the spotlight for folks to examine. They may also provide expert lectures for people to listen to. Sometimes, people even place bets on which bird will appear next.
Recently, the page turned from a raven to a blue jay, which no one bet on, apparently.
“I’m still amazed…it’s really magical,” one Bowdoin employee shared with News Center, joking that, for years, she’s been calling the event “Flipping the Bird.”
Whether you’re a bird enthusiast, a lover of libraries, or simply yearning for a healthy dose of slow living, there’s just so much to love about this.
“They don’t show up to watch a page being turned, they show up to watch the revealing of a piece of art,” reveled one online viewer.
Another wrote, “I think this is great! Libraries are full of wonders, and people should stop by anyway.”
Of course, Bowdoin isn’t the only library that holds one of these bad boys.
The Roseate Spoonbill, plate no. 65 from Audubon’s Birds of America. Huntington Library
Across the U.S., dozens of well-known libraries—Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Washington, D.C., for example—have their own copy of The Birds of America on display with their own page-turning tradition.
This event is just one of the many ways libraries have expanded far beyond quiet book rooms to offering surprisingly fun events. Depending on your local branch, you can attend live animal encounters, after-hours dance parties, juggling shows, and full-scale community comic-cons, just to name a few cool things.
But still, when it comes to customs that are delightfully off the beaten path, no place does it quite like Maine.
Maine is the home of bean suppers, a roadside signpost pointing toward “exotic” destinations like Paris, China, and Norway (all of them Maine towns), and perhaps most legendary of all: the Valentine’s Day Bandit, where a mysterious figure tapes hundreds of red paper hearts across the city on the night of February 13th.
We need things like this now more than ever
The world could always use more excuses to come together in real life. Oftentimes, it’s the events that don’t take themselves too seriously that provide just the right opportunity. Couldn’t we all use a little more levity in our lives? If that happens to come from a centuries-old bird book, great. If not, there are plenty more sources of joy to be gleaned.
