What Bird Got YOU Into Birding?

What bird got you into birding?

I will bet it was not a rare species or even a particularly beautiful one. I’ll wager it was one you saw in your back yard for years until one day, something happened, and it slipped into your heart. You took notice. Then another and another. There is always one bird that suddenly darts past our dull humanity and makes us realize we are not alone in this universe of creation. For me, it was the Veery.

Not a bird of brilliance like a Scarlet Tanager, Veerys have evolved to blend in with the warm browns of the woods they live in. They tend to be reddish above, with almost ghostlike spots on their breasts. A member of the family of Thrushes, along with Robins, Wood and Hermit Thrushes, it is the least spotted.

It may be plain, but its song will take the top of your head off. According to David Sibley in The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, "Underlying all avian vocal activity is the syrinx, an organ unique to birds...birds are capable of producing two separate sounds at once...."

A Veery's song is the song of creation itself; spiraling, ethereal, full of the rich promise of life. It is the bird whose mysterious and other-worldly dueting vocalization first attracted me to learning more about birds, which has in turn led to some of my most amazing life experiences.

During my equestrienne days, horse owners would ask me to exercise their horses when I finished with my barn chores, so I spent many spring and summer mornings in the big ring next to the woods riding circles and practicing transitions from the walk to the trot to the canter and back down again. They were sweet, magical mornings spent alone on the back of a good horse.

What is that sound? I would ask the horse. Who can sing like that? It was almost painful in its beauty and I would often stop and walk for awhile just to let it bless our bones. What a rose is to your nose, so a Veery’s song is to your ears. God’s sweet whisper.

I am not yet savvy enough to give you an icon here for the song, but if you click here, it will take you to the site where you can listen. Try it!

Walk in the Woods No 4: Corvid Mob

I wasn’t ten minutes into my walk today when the urgent crrrrroak! of a Fish Crow stopped me in the middle of the street. Suddenly, scores of crows tumbled through the air from their morning perches. A half-dozen Blue Jays appeared and even a robin. Everyone was in full cry and flying toward the same spruce tree in a neighbor’s back yard.

You know what THAT means! This is a good sign if you are a birder; not-so-good if you are the bird trying to hide.

I watched as they flowed into the tree. What was it going to be this time? A Great-horned Owl? A Red-tailed Hawk? One of the Red-shouldered Hawks that have been hanging around and helping themselves to birdy snacks from our feeders? You just never know what will spring out from the crush of a corvid mob. There are few who can remain perched and tolerate the pecks and threats of over 30+ upset birds. Make no mistake; they wanted this thing out of the neighborhood.

I didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute, the slender shape of an accipter with short, rounded wings slipped from its foliage cover and glided across the street. Quick wing beats sent the Sharp-shinned Hawk into the sky within seconds and out of range of the mobbing crowd.

You can always count on seeing really good birds when you don’t have the binoculars with you.

Blog Award!

Something totally unexpected happened to my blog! I have read about this happening to others but had no clue about how they started or why. Who dreams these things up? What creative spirit moves someone to take the time, the energy and the talent to come up with an idea that can brighten the day of another blogger?

The totally unexpected was that my blog was selected for the Arte y Pico award from Victoria Cummings, Teachings of the Horse , one of my favorite sites for Victoria’s extraordinary writing and sensitive insights into both horse and human natures. If I am in a bad place, that is where I go for the nurturing to get me through the day.

I am still a “newbie” blogger, having only started this past January after the steady prompting of a friend. I thought bloggers were only a crazy computer breed staring at their laptops under a swinging light bulb in the middle of the night. But what I have found is a universe of amazing, creative individuals and new-found acquaintances living vastly different lives. We are connecting in our own crazy way (and sometimes in the middle of the night. That part is true).

I am proud to display this beautiful award and be included in the fine company of Victoria, and of Arlene, Grey Horse Matters.

I would also like to pass this ray of light to the bloggers I seek out regularly:

My good friend, Bevson, a “two-fer” blogger, Murmuring Trees, a blog about cooking, traveling and her high-energy life; and Behind the Bins, her blog about birds and birding. Both display Bevson’s extraordinary photographs.

The Daily Coyote, a unique blog about the life of a woman living in a one-room cabin who, with the help of her orange cat, Ely, is raising an orphaned coyote.

Musings of Nature, by Wendy, whose love of the natural world shows through her writing and her environmental education career.

The Celery Farm and Beyond: Great nature blog about a unique wetland in northeastern NJ and the remarkable people who created it and keep it going. Don’t miss the Screech owl videos!

Becoming Kim: More than a mommy-blog, this is a friend who is a passionate writer and a fellow lover of horses.

The designer of this award has asked that the following be passed along with it:

The origin of the Arte y Pico Award: "This prize has arisen from the daily visits that I dedicate to many blogs which nourish me and enrich me with creativity. In them I see dedication, creativity, care, comradeship, but mainly, ART, much art. I want to share this prize with all those bloggers that entertain me day to day and to share this prize with those who enrich me every day. Doubtlessly, there are many and it will be hard to pick just a few. The people I will name today deserve this prize, as do the very long serious list of bloggers I also enjoy to read. But I will name the first 10 and leave the rest of the work to all the bloggers that visit other's blogs and are nourished by them."

Here are the rules, if you decide to pass the award further to remarkable blogs in blogosphere worth to mention:

The rules:
1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award through creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.
2. Each award should have the name of the author with a link to their blog.
3. Award winners have to post the award with the name and link to the blog of the person who gave them the award.
4. Please include a link to the “Arte Y Pico” blog so that everyone will know where the award came from.
5. Show these rules.

Thank you!!

Walk in the Woods (No. 3 of a sporadic series)

If you walk in the woods with me

leave your words at home.

Instead, join me in the ecstasy of solitude.

Leave your feet of clay

your accomplishments

your failures

the book you just read

your music

and listen

to the soprano trill of a chipping sparrow stippling the air

the bark of crows

the belch of bullfrogs from their emerald pond.

Float with clouds lumbering overhead

And see

the Red-tailed hawk, hanging,

for an instant, goddess of her universe

content in time.

If you walk in the woods with me

Leave your watch at home

and surrender to Wonder.

Enter the eternity of soil

the promise of life everlasting

in dirt.

Walk in the Woods (No. 2 of a sporadic series)

I like myself in the woods more than any other place in the world, more than being dolled up in sequins or standing with a crowd in a fancy ballroom. There is an honesty among trees that does not exist anywhere else. They can only be who they were made to be. They are honest. They listen. As I toe my way along a trail and rejoice in the soprano voices of streams, the whispering of leaves in a breeze, the soft wheep of a Great Crested Flycatcher on a summer morning, the top of my head seems to come right off.

Great mounds of honeysuckle pushed its hypnotic sweetness at me when I walked past them yesterday. I stopped and buried my face in it to pull its honey into my brain to draw it deep into the dark, tired places that grow like mold from working in a windowless room all week. Thus refreshed, I strolled back home the same way I came two hours before and was a better person for it.

Many years ago, my mother and I went for a walk at Ramapo Valley. It was one of those rare times when she was able to join me to hike one of my favorite trails. On the climb up a stony slope to a lookout summit, a woman who must have been in her 70’s was picking her way down the hill.

I was surprised to see someone of such an advanced age out alone in the woods. She stepped slowly, carefully, using a cane to balance herself as she teetered her way down. I wondered if I should offer to help her down, but then, she stopped and glanced up at us. She smiled.

She was once very beautiful. Her skin was clear, her gray hair was pulled back in an escaped bun that was now streaming down her back. Her blue eyes matched the sky. There was something about her that seemed holy, as if she were some kind of angel in hiking boots holding a cane. In one of those flashes of understanding that can never be contained in words, I thought:

“That’s me in fifty years.”

I’m almost there.

A Walk in the Woods (first of a sporadic series)

Out of sorts lately. No particular reason other than I am around just too many people sometimes. It’s been busy at work and I have a lot of extra jobs to do now. All this nonstop people contact leaves me feeling dry and picky.

So I went for a walk this morning despite the growing heat and humidity. Took the woods route to Skylands, NJ state botanical gardens. After emerging from the little path that winds behind the houses, I turned left to follow the road to the main gardens.

Not wanting to go into the public garden areas (too many people) I bore right instead, past the fields where you can see wild turkeys in winter. The road ran straight before me. On either side were a line of beech trees creating an emerald canopy of shade, making me feel like a woodland bride about to step onto the red carpet. My weariness slipped away.

A doe and her fawn were standing near the edge of the road at the far end. As a jogger came pumping up the hill from beyond them, the doe turned and bolted, flashing her white tail over her back as her fawn scampered behind, flicking her own banner in imitation of her mother's warning. They floated over the high grass in great leaps and bounds as they headed for the deep woods beyond the field

I glanced back at the jogger, and then saw another fawn still standing at attention where the doe had been. It was watching the bouncing man come closer, closer, closer. Why wasn’t it running away? Was something wrong with it? Was it a twin of the one I just saw running away?

Suddenly, it bolted along the track the other two had taken. The man lumbered along, smiled “Good morning,” to me as he passed. “And good morning to you,” I returned.

The fawn was now near the woods line. I stopped to look at it. Suddenly, it bolted straight at me. Mary Oliver’s story about a fawn that had once approached her flashed through my mind. It would not be a good thing for this creature to associate people with kindness.

The fawn galloped toward me, bleating, as if asking if I was its mother. It ran within ten feet of where I was standing, then veered off across the road to the field on the other side, turned around, dug its heels into the damp earth and pushed itself flat out in a running tear that brought it back over the field where its mother had been five minutes before. It whirled again and came leaping back toward me once more.

Where was the mother? Couldn’t she hear her baby cry? Her hearing was better than mine; why didn’t she come?

The fawn ran at me again but this time, I clapped my hands to frighten it away from my kind. It stopped and looked at me. Innocence itself was staring me in the face. For a full moment, nothing but this young deer and I existed. It was one of those amazing instants in time when the world surprises itself by staring into the eyes of another. I felt its young exuberance, its fear, its curiosity, its wonder.

What did the fawn see?

The world remembered itself quickly enough. The fawn gathered itself on its haunches and leaped straight into the air, white tail flag flashing. It hardly landed when it leaped again and again, propelling itself into the woods this time, out of my sight but not out of my heart.

Good luck, I whispered. May the Light go with you.

MY DAY!

My birthday week has begun. I don’t dare tell anyone how much I enjoy this time. You are supposed to be quiet about your birthday, discreet. No one is supposed to know. If it’s your birthday, keep it under your hat. If you find out it’s someone else’s birthday, they often will get all embarassed, like you just found their underwear in the hallway. “Oh, I don’t pay any attention to that,” they say. “It’s just another day. Promise not to tell anyone.”

I am not sure whether this isn’t just one more nail in the coffin of age discrimination, which is a silent killer of respect for anyone over 50 years old in this country. I suppose this grown-up attitude about the day you were born is part of maturing. The feeling of being special because you arrived X number of years ago on such and such a day goes out with the tooth fairy. The information about your birthday goes underground with all the other dirty little secrets you are not supposed to talk about.

I go along with this on the outside, and may refer to “sometime in June” as the month of my birth. I also demure with a quick smile and a shake of the head when asked which day. I don’t want to look childish to the world outside my inner circle of family and friends. But inside, behind my serene gaze, I am stringing the lights and breaking out my inner party hats, because baby, I love my birthday!

My birthday is MY DAY. I get only one a year, and look forward to it with gusto. It has nothing to do with presents, though none are turned down. It has everything to do with guilt-free self indulgence.

First, whenever possible, I give myself the gift of time; the whole day if I can swing it. I putter around the garden, write in my notebook, read, dine on Haagen Dasz mocha chip ice cream, go for a long walk in the woods, take a nap, happily receive telephone calls from loved ones, and generally roll around in an internal riot of sparkling specialness. It’s MY DAY, the anniversary of my entry into this world, never to happen again (that I know of). What’s to be ignored about that?

If today is YOUR DAY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Go out and celebrate you!

I'm Going to BlogHer

After a recent Life Disappointment, I moped around for awhile feeling sorry for myself and gazing disconsolately out the window. This went on for a few weeks until a friend of mine told me about the BlogHer conference in San Francisco, where bloggers from all walks and talks of life would be gathering to meet and talk about their blogs. It would be an opportunity to meet some of the women whose blogs I regularly enjoy, as well as a chance to learn about the latest and greatest gadgets (I love gadgets). So, I decided to console myself by doing something different, out of the ordinary (for me), far away, exciting, inspiring, invigorating, thought-provoking, challenging, and just plain fun. I signed up!
I’ve wanted to attend since I first learned about this organization. There was a BlogHer business version of this conference in New York this past April (missed that one) but the conference in California is for all bloggers from all walks and talks of life: the Mommy bloggers, the horse bloggers, the birder bloggers, the blabber bloggers. We will mingle with other writers and other minds, learn about each other’s lives, get some questions answered, and generally have a fab time.
So, in a few short weeks, I will be winging my way to San Francisco, where my friend and I will spend a couple of bonus days roaming the Napa Valley (my first time), then return to the city for the opening meeting for newbie BlogHer participants on Thursday evening.
I will be blogging on the spot about the whole thing, so in a sense, I will be bringing you all with me! Can’t wait!

Heat Wave

"They" said we going to get a heat wave. It’s more like the sky has fallen and we are slogging through the innermost parts of a working blast furnace.

Every man, woman and child who comes through the door of my workplace announces: “It’s hot out there!” (like it’s a surprise). Their moist faces are red. Schools have closed. Town pools are hosting special openings. Some people faint; others break down slowly from lack of sleep and the stress that only extended and extremely hot weather can bring. If you don’t have an air conditioner, you’re screwed.

We have a little window unit that my husband nearly kills himself every year putting in. I never ask him to do it; he just does, yanking and banging and swearing and grunting until voila! Cool air sweeps through the rooms. Ceiling fans shove the air around and keeps the house temperature tolerable.

But last night, we lost electricity, and it stayed lost for hours. We were fortunate that the sun was already down and the house full of cooled air. After an hour; however, we went into the bedroom and slid open the windows to let in what there was of the night breezes. What we both noticed, immediately, was the awesome quiet of the world gone suddenly dark and silent.

Gone was the static hum of air conditioners, the white flash of big screen televisions, gone were the foot lights along dark sidewalks and porch lights. Gone were the big motion detector floodlights attached to houses blocks away that keep our street under blind surveillance. No thumping music from the neighbor’s son’s MP3 player.

It was an unexpected treat; a sudden assault of silence. The part of me that never sleeps embraced the dark quiet as if recognizing an old friend. The night air smelled of roses, finally cool upon my face.

I slept better than I have in days.

I Can See Clearly Now

It’s odd how when your mind is engaged elsewhere, creative things can happen.

The dull chore of washing windows has been nagging me for weeks. I thought about it every time I gazed out the window at the emerging hosta in the front garden and thinking either there was a new, blurry variety of plant, or I needed new glasses. But since most of my windows were yielding the same vague result, I had to concede. So when a co-worker asked me last Friday, “What are your plans this weekend?” my answer was, “I am going to wash windows.” (Don’t I know how to have a good time?)

I tried to talk myself out of it. I did my best, even offered Sunday to myself to sit and read my current novel. After the breakfast dishes were cleaned up, I did read for an hour, then suddenly, as if taken over by the window cleaning spirits, I put the book down, fetched a roll of paper towels and the toxin-free window cleaner and got to work.

We have the old style windows, not the easy flip-out kind that makes the job easy and quick. I slid out the screen and the two storm windows, rubbed them until they sparkled, then puzzled them back into place. It took just enough of my attention away from my various Life Issues to stay focused on how to clean both sides of 3-over-3 windows panes, and which storm window slides in first? when an idle thought drifted in about how to solve a knotty problem at work. I had not thought about it in days, indeed, I try to keep work and home lives separate, but this innocent solution slipped in the back door while I was out in front. It was then I realized I was enjoying myself, as pitiful as that can sound when you are only washing windows.

It’s amazing how it happens. It’s accidental. Focus on the ordinary and the extraordinary happens. I don’t know if you can set it up on purpose. It’s like looking at something in the dark; you can only see it with the periphery of your vision. It is odd that humans have evolved to see in the dark that way, as if we are not entirely part of the predator crowd despite the forward position of our eyes. There is something vulnerable in the dark that our intuitive unconscious knows about, and like most prey (pray?) species, our peripheral vision is cued to respond with answers from beyond ourselves.

Just something to think about, next time you’re washing your windows.

Quick, Three Beers!

“Quick, three beers!”

If you are a birder, a call like that would not send you rushing to the closest pub for a brew. No, no, no. A birder would be grabbing binoculars, not Budweisers. “Quick three beers!” is the distinctive song of the Olive-sided Flycatcher calling from its perch at the top of a snag.

You know how you can recognize someone you know by the click of their shoes down the hallway, or by their laughter, or the way they clear their throat? You don’t have to see them; you know who it is. It’s the same way with birds, but it helps to use various mnemonics to remember who sounds like what.

Here’s another one:

“If I sees you I will squeeze you and I’ll squeeze you till you squirt!” Mumble it quickly and you will have the steady song of a Warbling Vireo.

I am fond of collecting these phrases. They help me identify birds when they are tucked into dense canopy or too far to spot with binoculars.

The sweet little White-throated Sparrow calls for somebody named Sam Peabody:“Old sam, peabody, peabody, peabody….” But some people hear it as, “Oh sweet Canada, Canada, Canada.” But a Field Sparrow, singing while balancing from a stem in the middle of a meadow, sounds like a trill, or a rapidly bouncing tennis ball.

One of my favorite birds returning every spring is the spectacular Scarlet Tanager who lets us know he has arrived with his distinctive call note, "Chick-Burr!"

And while this is not truly a mnemonic, the rambling song of the Red-eyed Vireo (with apologies to any reader who happen to be a member of the clergy) earned them the nickname “Preacher Bird,” because of their tendency to go on, sounding like they are asking a question and answering it over and over.

Chestnut-sided warblers are “pleazed, pleased, pleased to MEETCHA!”

Some birds make it easy by announcing their names:

“Killdeer, killdeer, killdeer!” Say this quickly, out loud, and in a falsetto voice and you have a Killdeer. In spring, they pair off to nest on open ground; in the middle of rocky parking lots, or even the stone-covered roof of the building where I work. Once I saw a nest roped off in the middle of a show ring while a small group of horses were galloping around it. Even pounding hooves didn’t keep that little mother from protecting her eggs.

On a hot, hazy, humid summer day, you might hear this bird’s lone call from the woods:

“Peeeeeweeeeee:” Eastern Wood Peewee.

As children, we learned the Northern Bobwhite from a Golden book. It almost sounds like it could be a neighbor.

“Bob….White!”

My birding buddy does a drop dead accurate imitation of the throaty emphasis of the Eastern Phoebe:

“PHOEBE! PHOEBE!”

She stops short of catching flies in her mouth, however, for which we are all grateful.

Birders and Our Stuff

Binoculars, “bins,” are a birder’s most coveted piece of equipment. I used to hear people claim that birding was a pretty inexpensive hobby, after you buy the bins and the bird guide. You can enjoy birds everywhere, they said. As long as you have at least those two items, they will take you a long way.

Binoculars range in price from $50 to over $2,000. Most feed into that rule, “You get what you pay for.” But birders carry other stuff as well. In fact, the more you go birding, the more cool stuff you see other birders have, and the more you need it yourself.

One of the simplest and cheapest items to bring along on a birding expedition is a “Lens Pen.” This is a handy gadget that looks like a BIC on steroids. Push a slider tab on one end and a soft brush emerges so you can gently waft away accumulating dust and grit and chocolate chip cookie crumbs from the eyepieces. Flip the cap off the other end and you have a circle of felt-like material to polish the glass free of dribble stains. Very handy in the field. I am rarely without one in my pocket.

Another must-have is the bird guide. As my little birding jaunts take me ever further afield, a guide book for that area gets added: A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica by F. Gary Stiles and Alexander F. Skutch; Mexican Birds by Roger Tory Peterson/Edward L. Chalif; Birds of Belize by H. Lee Jones; Western Birds by Roger Tory Peterson; The Shorebird Guide by Michael O’Brien, Richard Crossley and Kevin Karlson; Guide to Bird Finding in New Jersey by William J. Boyle, Jr.; all three volumes of A Guide to Bird Behavior by Stokes; Eastern Birds of Prey by Neal Clark; Warblers of the Great Lakes Region & Eastern North America by Chris G. Earley; A Photographic Guide to North American Raptors by Brian K.Wheeler & William S.Clark and…well, you get my point.

My two books seeing the most wear and tear are the latest fifth edition (2002) of Roger Tory Peterson’s Birds of Eastern and Central North America. Peterson was the ornithologist/artist who cracked open the world of birding to us commoners by emphasizing “field marks” to identify a bird, thereby eliminating the rather heavy-handed practice of killing them in order to learn what they were. I also have the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, which is highly regarded for its precise detail and amazing organization. But in the field, I keep sneaking back to Peterson, which is where I cut my birding teeth. I like to keep everybody happy, so I bring them both along for the ride.

The list goes on: A snack or sandwich, water bottle, tissues, notebook and pencil, a good pocket knife (I once cut down about a quarter mile of fishing line that some nasty bastard in a bad mood strung between trees and shrubs, right at the level that could have slit someone’s throat if they didn’t notice the almost invisible nylon filament).

Cell phone (turned off so it won’t spook the birds—you will not be the most popular person on the planet if your phone rings at the same time a coveted bird flies in).

A baseball cap or some protection from the sun. A visor also cuts down the sun glare which can be murderous when magnified. And depending upon the time of year; sunscreen, insect repellent (I swear by Avon Bug Guard Plus), or for winter birding, those little hand and foot warmers package thingees, great for keeping your precious digits from frostbite while standing next to a frozen lake in a 20 degree below zero wind chill gale to see a Trumpeter Swan.

When my birding guru friend, Suzanne, and I were in Cape May, one of the premier birding capitals of the world, we bumped into Sharon Stitetler of Birdchick on the trail to Higbee’s Beach. She was using a handheld PDA, and with a little wand, was scrolling through screens and birdsongs, maps, field marks, and confusing look-alikes. No heavy books to weigh her down.

I love gadgets. She showed it to us, let me play with it. I swore then and there I needed one immediately until I found out how much it cost (almost 500 smackers at the time) so suddenly, I didn’t need it anymore. Besides, I don’t want to upset Roger.

Are you a birder? What do you bring with you?