Birdwatching is disguised meditation — the patient stilling of the self in service of something that does not know and does not care that you are watching it. The practice requires exactly the quality Nasreddin cultivated: the ability to look just to the side of where everyone else is looking, because the important thing is usually not at the center of the frame. A lifetime of birdwatching produces, as a side effect, a person who has learned to pay the particular kind of attention that notices what is actually there.
Each step builds on the last.