Another major theme, already treated in part under "social concerns" (see above), involves the motifs and image-clusters that address matters of nature, hunting, and environmentalism. Much of what Hemingway has to say about hunting-as-ritual, about ethical standards of hunting, about his duty as a game warden, is precisely what we would expect from Hemingway. But there are some surprising variations in True at First Light on the theme of nature—e.g., Hemingway the Bird-watcher. He and Miss Mary study bird books and observe the extraordinary bird life very carefully, and Mary does so with greater precision. This leads Hemingway to write, after the lion quest is over: "by hunting one beast too hard and concentrating on him I had missed much in not observing the birds properly.... I had neglected them terribly. Reading the bird book I felt how stupid I had been and how much time I had wasted." He thinks of all the birds—their movements, colors, songs—that he loves to watch at home in Cuba and resolves to study African bird life with the same love and attention. Then he pronounces a touchstone value in his code for the well-lived life: "This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it."