So many reasons not to play golf–or, if you do play, to deny it.

The two most obvious ones–it costs too much and takes too long–should suffice, but if they don’t, they imply a third: privilege. That is, anybody who has that kind of money and time is “privileged,” and nobody, these days, wants to face that indictment.

Then there’s the gear: clubs, bag, balls, tees, gloves, towels, caps, shoes, one tool for repairing divots and another for scouring grooves . . . . You might as well be going on safari (a fairly rich analogy, when you think about it).

Worst of all, though, is golf’s smug self-righteousness. You get the impression that if we didn’t have golf to build our character, we’d all be snatching purses and drinking Thunderbird out of brown paper bags.

But. Here’s the thing: birds love golf courses just as much as privileged white males do. I was about to hit my second shot on the ninth hole of my local course the other day when I saw a kingbird perched on a yardage post, the white band at the base of its tail announcing its identity to all and sundry. I have long read about this bird’s aggressive intolerance of larger birds like crows and hawks, but I have never seen it anywhere except on the golf course.

I write in the book about never having seen a wood thrush. Actually, I have, scratching around in the shrubbery of a lawn bordering the golf course. And as for that beautiful bird the sight of which (it is said) led Alexander Wilson to become an ornithologist, you absolutely cannot play golf–in Georgia at least–without seeing a redheaded woodpecker swooping from one pine tree to another.

Canada geese? Plenty, assuming your golf course has a pond or two. And on those clear-blue February days, the wide sky above the fairway is the best place in the world to watch sandhill cranes headed back north.

See? It’s not that golf has me by the short hair. I’m really just a naturalist in a goofy hat.