Birding

I’m not a professional birder.  I never will be.  In my mind these people are thin, ancient with hooked-beak noses and translucent skin.  They all have blue eyes.  Rheumy, in a way, from staring through binoculars for hours at a time.  They can walk silently for hours, for miles, days at a time.  They can identify birds by call, by sight, within seconds of seeing a flash of darting feathers flit from tree to tree.  In the shadows.  They make notes, copious notes, and compare them with the notes they made previously.  They remember names.  They would never say Scaup unless they meant it.  They have one or two thousand species on their life lists.  They don’t sweat.  I’m sure there are also fabulously fit, gorgeous birders with binoculars that weigh 50 lbs that can see into bat caves, and these folks, too, can hike for days across desert or mountain without breaking a sweat, or mis-naming a warbler.

I’m sure they’re all very nice.  However, that’s not me.  I’m dumpy and trudge through the woods, and if there is an uphill (especially in altitudes above 2,000 ft) I huff and puff like the big bad wolf.  I often see birds but am also distracted by squirrels.  As well as the amazing, intricate and delicate flowers that line the path of the trail.  I see them because my head is bent down, under the weight of the binoculars and I’m doing everything I can to keep going.  Thoughts of bears flit through my mind - from corner to corner - with vivid images, usually based on the movie “Grizzly Man.”  I hear bird calls, and they make me smile, I love knowing the birds are there.  I feel their presence. But I don’t think that counts on life lists.

Every now and then all the elements coincide and I am standing still, I have my binoculars and a bird alights somewhere out in the open.  And voila!  I can see him (her?) through my lenses.  Up close, the strong beak, the quick, bright eyes.  The strong, skinny feet clutching a branch or a fence wire.  And on a particularly good day while I’m looking the bird will open it’s mouth and sing ... and I’m mesmerized.  I can hear it AND see it.  It is up close and amazingly real.

Real beyond just being there.  Real beyond just sensing it’s presence.

And, a couple of times I have been able to identify a new species while this is happening.  A yelloow-headed blackbird, a western meadowlark, a mountain chickadee.  Mostly, however, I say to myself “small, brown, there’s a stripe there by it’s eye...looks like its in the sparrow family ... maybe warbler...hmmm”  Yeah.  I’m not a professional.

Even in my outrageously amateurish participation in birding (and believe me, all you professionals I’m using that to describe my activities VERY loosely) every now and then I get a deep, gorgeous thrill when I see a bird .... I know it is one I have never seen before ... and from the depths of my memory I hear “Gray Jay” or “Green Winged Teal” ... and I’m right! 

But the thrill is not in being right.  The thrill comes in seeing, in really, truly seeing the bird. Opening my mind, my heart my life to the possibility that some wild creature may cross my path and I actually notice it.  I don’t get anything from it, no picture, no scaling up the ladder of life-lists, no pat on the back, no yummy meat for dinner.

Just a chance encounter with something so unique, so amazing, so complicated and so fabulous.  And all I have to do is stop.  Open my eyes.  And see. 

(This last photo is one that I actually took - and I think it is a Gray Jay ... there was a family of 5 ... and I'm still thrilled!)

The Garden Grows pt. 2

The garden is officially thriving! We got the seedlings in the ground about a week ago, and with our current cold snap the little buggers seem to be settling in for a great winter growth-fest.

We have four different lettuces, carrots (both orange and purple) and a variety of herbs including sage, rosemary, marjoram, parsley, mint and lemongrass. I recently discovered Lemon Basil and am hoping to get some of those in as well.

In the other area we have Cabbage, Kale, Chard, Collards. I'm not sure when the Broccoli is going in, but soon. Now that we have the basic plots organized and planted, we can fill in with the experiments.

I want some of those little baby fingerling potatoes.

So far the birds seem to love the garden - I imagine there are quite a few bugs and worms that have been turned up with all the tilling and planting. We haven't seen any rabbits or deer yet. I bet they are just waiting for the lettuce to get a little more robust. I have to say it does my heart good to look out the window and see the possibilities of fruits of our labor. Every time I take another Aleve I remind myself of that.

An Influx of Grackles

Yesterday my daughter and I were sitting on our back porch reading. It was about 4:30 pm and the day was one of those fall days that really wants to be a summer day - it was muggy, hot and taking a long time to be over. The sun was bright and out of the edge of my awareness I saw some shadows moving across the ground.

Looking up from our books we noticed a flock of Grackles swooping into the trees at the edge of the woods ... about 500 feet behind our house. The flock kept coming, and coming, and coming. They swarmed into the water oaks and magnolias. They flew right into the pines and sycamores and pecan. They swooped into the bird feeders and down at the pond and onto the bird baths. And they kept coming and coming and coming. They swayed on the flimsy leaves of the bay tree, and perched on the rosemary bush.

(Fortunately, my daughter has never seen Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" so she was enrapt; I was leery.)

I snuck quietly, stealthily into the kitchen to get my camera. The birds didn't seem to interested in my movements. But the ones in the yard did flutter up into some trees. Too bad my camera couldn't really catch the view of these trees simply filled up with large black birds! The whole experience lasted about 45 minutes as they absolutely stripped my feeders of all the seed, and emptied the bird baths of water.

It's funny, I don't normally like Grackles. They're loud and noisy. They are messy. They chase off the other birds. The don't make beautiful songs (at least not at my house) and they've got this rather creepy, intense yellow eye in their dark head that gives me the impression that they not only see me but they also know what I'm thinking. It's very weird. But when they swoop in with such large numbers, and grace me with their presence, well, I feel compelled to like them a little bit.

And it turns out, it's not so hard to do.

(p.s. if you click on the photos they get larger and you can see that eerie yellow eye!)