Deb and I are 'downsizing' and the shuffling of papers begins. She came at me the other day presenting a newspaper story from '2000 about' birding. Some guy named "Sibley' she said.....

Now....in 2000, Sibley was 39 years old and had just printed off THE Sibley Guide to  Birds. Let's see....in 2000 I was teaching 4th grade in Washington State. Just earned my Masters' and was into Technology. My daughters were 18 and 16 and wanting to leave the house. But If you take the time I was 39 years old, I was teaching 3rd grade and was just getting into Technology. So, there I was....you? Where were you and what were you doing when the bible of Birding came out in 2000 or when you were 39? Think...ponder. Did you write your bible?

Upon reading the article, Sibley went thru his life and the beginnings of his bird drawings was as a young lad of 6 as his dad was an ornithologist. From that point it just expanded and he really got hooked on birding when he started banding birds in California. In 1980 he was hired by Pete Dunne to count hawks at Higbee Beach for $200 for three weeks of work. It wasn't until he casually spent time in the Meadows between 1992 and 1999 that he started 'fixing' what needed to be fixed in regards to  Peterson's Guide to Birds. 

Well, the rest is history..... But, what is in a name you say? One has to admit that the father of birding here in America was John James Audubon. His successor was Roger Tory Peterson. ....two great ones. So when Sibley's book to birding was near completion and, according to the article....a Knopf publisher company representative 'met in person' with Sibley to obviously discuss making the book successful. Hard to imagine his guide being 'not successful', but it must have been discussed. The company representative suggested that 'to be in keeping' with John James Audubon and Roger Tory Peterson, that David Sibley should use his middle name as well on the cover. So, instead of just David Sibley, he is now David ALLEN Sibley.....as he stated, he was happy to oblige, after all....when you've got a book on the best-seller list, things aren't like they used to be. 

Success? Yes, I guess.....in the first few weeks his guide sold over 100,000 copies and a second printing was made. Taking a look at my copy, it was the 11th printing in the 2010 edition so how many sold between 2000 and 2010 and how many between 2010 and now? .....

Saturday the 14th of April......one 'sunny and warm day'...a perfect invitation setting up our Audubon walk. Upon quick recollection, this made (2) days in a row where nice weather nestled in. One, two...not hard to count nor remember. The scheduled Plant Walk with Michael Stanton, which is Sunday the 15th most likely isn't going to copy-cat this day.

Now this Audubon walk had 15-16 of us strung up and down, captivated in birds and the absorption of sun. Kind of a meandering bunch initially as we found our way up and down the initial pathways near the visitor center. Tree Swallows in flight and finches 'fighting in-flight' for territory...A fly-by of 7 laughing gulls and another of 17 Ibis. A blue-gray gnatcatcher in the parking lot, and with the use of Charles's scope, a willet or two way out beyond the boardwalk.

As we scoped the trees and fields in back of the visitor center, a nice low flying raptor made it's appearance as it skulked thru the trees and then plunked itself down on the picnic table in the Nature Classroom. The raptor had us raptured. 

A formidable entrance as well as a presence that unmistakably defined this bird as being transplanted from Hollywood to Jersey. It's entrance was just too grand for the normal run-of-the-mill Jersey raptor as it looked for the red carpet treatment leading to the picnic table. In it's inflight quick-glance mode, the white evident on the upper tail was leading to a Northern Harrier, as Charles voiced. But once landed, it turned it's spots to either a Cooper's or Sharp-shinned. 

A bit of a debate ensued at this juncture. Kevin looked at the 'square-notched' tail and equated it to a Cooper's but Charles chimed in questioning that the square-tailed was Sharp-shinned. A quick look into Sibley gave this 'squareness' the edge to being a Sharp-shinned. But wait....it just didn't appear right. Other features started to take root....such as a broader head, the stance, the long tail....the size...the manner in which it skulked in...

In the end, the consensus turned to a Cooper's  (this one or that one?) who had a propensity towards a squaretail or perhaps how it simply 'settled' in to place upon landing. Not to mention the obvious Hollywood breeding, a bird unique to itself.

Moving on down the lane..... Kris had this strong desire to see her first Pine Warbler of the season..... and yes, one cooperated with her nicely. A beautiful Pine Warbler in vintage plumage presented itself on a 'cherry tree?"....what you say? A Cherry tree? Ah, that's okay as it eventually moved to a neighboring pine.

From my advantage as I 'banked out' right after Gull Tower....nothing overly notable although Stanton tried to entice birds. But do you know what made the day? Well, two things...... first the 'sun'. What a nice morning for a walk. After a less than glamorous and  sunless crappy winter and early spring season, it was nice to just have sun and short sleeves for the most part.

The other thing that made the day was simply 'the company'. An excellent group of 'nice people' is the cornerstone and substance of this Atlantic Audubon Society. Stop and think for a moment. Have you ever heard anyone in this group attempt to take-over and be a prima-donna or insult those of less knowledge and skills? Nada...never. This Audubon bunch simply has 'character' and strength from each individual within....they help, chime in....assist, debate, laugh....walk and talk...and watch. A truly unique collection en masse. 

Count Dracula.....the name shouts volumes. I can envision in the 1890's when Bram Stoker was writing this horror novel, how devious his  thoughts must have been as he chuckled mischievously with each pen of words. Or in 1931 when Bela Lugosi made the first of many movies on Dracula.....but  better yet, to my youth as Christopher Lee played the fanged vampire...the stake in the heart and the resurrection in subsequent films. Goosebumps........from childhood arise.

Today I want to  instill that same fear.....tremor...a cold sweat within daytime panic and nightmares settled in utter restlessness. Pure 'beta noire'.

Grackles.....brown-headed cowbirds, red-winged blackbirds.....hear me, I command. My quest to have your trembling in your feathers has begun for I, Knight of the Birdseed at this premise, has created a Draconian existence as it hovers around each feeder. My own devious invention akin to the words of Bram Stoker now take hold in draconian nature. How dare you enter this realm and if such stupidness bestows one, it does so with a wicked unease, an aversion to life....feelings of dismay and despair as you seek a solitary seed. With trepidation, yes.... you might drop from above, branch by branch....until you sense the seeds within  reach. But no...... no..... Behold the Draconian Contraption, behold....behold this.....beware. You have been warned. 

How good of you to drop by. 

Well....it happened....was bound to. The first bird walk of the season was April 7th. A bit on the cold side but 7 of us braved the weather. Actually wasn't that difficult unless you wanted the 'feel of your fingers'..... 

An Osprey collected sticks...a one stick fly-by....then another one stick fly-by, followed by a third. I think the sticks got bigger with each fly-by. Never did catch a glimpse of where the sticks went but they were 'over there' someplace, beyond the tree. 

But a few colors..., a couple of Purple Martins made their appearance a-top of the  visitor center. A glimpse of blue with an American Bluebird and BlueJay. Some Yellow-rumped Warblers and some Red-wing Blackbirds. Far off were some Green-winged Teals and some American Robins and some American Black Crows and  Brown-headed Cowbird...(well.....scan the complete color list under Bird Walk Results on the top menu)...

But a nice Caspian Tern on the hunt....a Northern Flicker going the other way, and speaking of an American Bittern in conversation, there was one....and 'oh my gosh', a Tri-colored Heron! 

The tap tap of a Red-bellied Woodpecker...the honks of a flock of Canada goose, the squeak of a Tit-mouse and the song of a Carolina Wren and the song(S) of a mockingbird. 

 Frozen fingers and senses....sights, colors and sounds. 

Are you ready now? Tap your heals three times now.... (Click Link in case your forgot about this)

So, the question still is, are you ready? What is your wish? To return home to Kansas or perhaps....yes perhaps....find a Cape May Warbler. Oo la la.... I haven't seen a Cape May Warbler and I must admit, that 'that' is on my wish list for 2018.

What is on yours? It doesn't have to be a huge thing. For instance, perhaps your wish is to find one bird or perhaps your wish is larger such as wishing to travel to the Everglades, or ?

My wish list....Cape May Warbler or the Cerulean Warbler. If I had my druthers, I would take the former as I have seen the latter in South America. But I would take both. I feel this year I want to venture to Delaware River Gap and hunt and seek. Deb's mom lives up in Allentown so it would be just a jump from there, right? Of course, that is the easy part, ....finding one......well, that is beyond my control. I will listen to the song, practice looking up at the top of trees for hours to develop my warbler neck....Will spend the winter practicing fast focus on the bins (1-2-3- go...focus)...   :-). Well, you know...

Now, I have always had a 'travel wish list' that corresponds with birds. Last year I spent time in Homer, Alaska (my 50th state) and appreciated the wind and cold and the Bering Sea. Years past, with youth instilled in my loins, I knew many of my friends who 'fished ' the Bering Sea earning money for college. But, did they take the time to witness the sea birds? I doubt it....so while I missed that opportunity in college, I hit upon it last year and didn't have to fish.

This year....two things. Texas in Feb or March....more specifically I want to see the Santa Ana Refuge before 'idiot-man' builds a wall thru it. Idiot man is an idiot without self-recognition of, as most idiots are. Idiot man exists but idiot man will not endure. Anyhow, I have a target of 21 birds I want to see in the Rio Grande area and feel I have a  great chance of seeing all 21 Texas / Mexico birds.....

My other 'wish' is to participate in the 'vomit' boat and see my pelagic birds. Yes, while in the Bering Sea I saw a few, but not like a pelagic adventure deep out to sea. But I am not as willing to vomit on the east coast as much as readily vomiting on the west coast. You see, it all has to do with the continental shelf. On the east coast, in order to do a proper pelagic trip, one has to vomit way out to sea...spend hours on the boat and having the pleasure of vomiting multiple hours and perhaps over the course of a few days as one leaves port, spends the night aboard the vomit vessel and then views birds the following day...way out at sea, all of this extended vomiting time is due to the distance of the continental shelf. 

While on the west coast, the shelf doesn't extend as far, thus limiting the exposure time to the routine of vomiting. I figure from Newport, Oregon in August or Sept would be prime time to vomit. I would leave port around 7 in the morning and face the seas to vomit.  But we would return 5-7 hours later, having more of a reprieve for 'one' who prefers less of a sea-leg adventure.

So.... Texas to view the refuge prior to the actions of idiot man, and Newport Oregon to vomit. Those are my wish list activities. Of course, the relatively benign trip to Delaware River Gap sandwiched in between.

Now....your wish list is? 

I moved around slightly this morning .....outside to catch a bit of air in the lee hours.  A light rain was falling on my deck, and early morning rain.

Capturing the mist that fell, I opened my arms and starred upwards towards the sky. No stars tonight, no clouds even,...just darkness in night which barely moved. The rain fell but not in clumps or dots or drops, but just mist...and 'fine' at that.

As I just allowed myself to experience this and think of just this, a small flutter next to me in a bush woke me to reality. A little bird of sorts, black...brown, ...not sure, but it was small. Perhaps a titmouse, a sparrow or the like. The mist must have pounded down upon the wings and crest. I wondered to myself....what would it be like to be here tonight in the shadows of nothing, to know that only 'something' is on me, ....For I, though here in much the same shadows knew of the early morning rain, but to this little guy in the bush, what was it? 

No one to cuddle with.....not even a blanket or plush animal to offer a resemblance of security. No others, although I can't believe it strayed here alone, were there to offer comfort. Much like those humans who came 'way before us' where they too must have been in awe of what 'was'....the days prior to science and knowledge. Not like this bird had no knowledge for yes, it did...it does. It knows where to find food in the whiteness of snow, or how to move over miles as it, along with many others navigate the world, or how it can crack a seed using only a beak, or can fly and dive and swoop or, how about how can it fly between a seemingly array of branches in a tree and pop out the other side unscathed? It has knowledge indeed, but not of this mist, this early morning rain.

I shrugged off my thoughts and moved back inside.... went back to bed. Deb asked me where I was and I thought and replied....nowhere, just out to view the darkness and to ponder nothing. 

Although a forfeiture of a visual, a gain in sound.... The Chickadee was one I heard just today. I ventured into the wind and braved my way to the car, ...just to get what was left behind, but, in doing so....I found a sound that rang well to my ears.
 
A lone chickadee...... someplace in the birch above. Hidden, ....clasped to a branch as the wind blew the leaves and most likely ruffled a feather. It chirped again and I looked once more. I made my way around the birch, with low hung branches and leaves still attached. The swaying caught the side of my face and I brushed to pull the tree away. I looked up, yet no chickadee....only the sound. 

Feeling a calling...I played seek and find, although I was limited to just 'seek'.... I moved back, yards away....and waited for the sound. Yes, over there on the top left, or is that center , or perhaps at ten? Not sure but it called once more. The gray clouds simply cloaked the maker of the sound as the starkness of the glare came down to me. While I jaunted around the tree like a child playing 'ring around the rosie', the Chickadee seemed to elude me, and  ignored my advancements. The song was a continued orchestratic aspect of nature that moved me as I just gave up and decided to concentrate on listening alone. 

Listen I did......until Deb called to me, breaking my zen. I looked up and repeated something to her, reminiscent of Charlie  Brown talk, as I now recall.... Yet, falling back to the birch and the tree and the Chickadee, it was now the bird who eluded me not just in vision but in sound too. I had lost the game. The chickadee had grown tired of 'seek and attempt to find' and I was left under the canopy of the birch, alone and at a loss for thought. 

I immediately realized it was a bit shy of being warm so I hustled back to the front door. Along the way I crooked my eyes to gain one last view of the tree but to no  avail. Yes, I had lost..... But I didn't really for my mind still embraced the call of the Chickadee, so as I ventured inside, I knew I won, I won....I was blessed today with the sound of the wild. 

What an odd fall......  no birds....no birds around my feeders. Like toy     shelves stocked for Christmas, with employees lying in wait, ...cash registers brimming with change---all in anticipation of meddling ones who will flock in to just gaze, or touch, or to take off the shelf and feel and drop, yes, so are my feeders. They lie in wait in the breeze, as I hear the wind blow thru the half-naked trees, a  gust pushing the chimes....a car swishing by....but still they lie in wait. The thistle is all 'thistled' to the top , yet nary a gold finch. Feeders plump with seed and not a lonesome dove. Suet sticking to the sides and perhaps, yes...perhaps...one little downy visiting now and then as if that is enough to quench my hunger for to view these flying creatures. 

I know.....I have read up on this...... too warm up north...too much food...feeders are not needed. Hey, isn't that a good thing? Yes, it is nice to know that we as humans are not 'that needed', although we like to believe we are. Most of the time we involve ourselves in the practice of destroying so when our services are rendered but not used, we feel a bit abused. But wait, Arnold had it right when he so eloquently stated, 'I will be back'..... So will the birds.

But a soft morning such as this, where your eyes naturally wander outside to see movement in the branches and ground, a sudden gasp of breath occurs as your mind skips a thought or two, it is a scary thing of what 'might be' more common than not. My grand kids are a 'few months to 5+', and I wonder....as an adult, as the years mitigate youth, as they sit here on a Sunday morning, will they be astonished by what is not, or....will they accept simply what is? 

Fifty years from now.....where will our birds be? Will our 'kind' during these years have saved wildlife or will we have made wildlife an anomaly of nature? Think of that, will wildlife be reduced to simply that of an anomaly? To go beyond birds,  will we have elephant heads on our walls to grandly display the power that man has conquered over a mere beast, or will we have an elephant in the wild to actually view and smell and sense it's power? Sitting on a plane the other day, I was chatting with my neighbor Arturo Izurieta, who is the director of the Charles Darwin Research Center in the Galapagos. We passed the time between late hours talking about the loss of large sharks in the Galapagos. Yet, it could have been anywhere. In future years will this anomaly of lacking wildlife be a permanent loss found within our birds and at our feeders? Will birds occasionally drop in to our feeders, as a grandparent does now, or will we have lost the same in large quantities due to our poisoning of the land or even a simple thing such as using 'lead in shot'....What will my Jonah, my James and my Amy view when they gain their years as easily as pounds? What will be your grandson's and daughters understanding of the same? What will be their anomaly in nature? Will it be nature itself, or perhaps it might be 'us' as humans....as our growing advancement in humanity appears to be steered to the lack of humanity, a loss of a race. We will become a blend of Artificial Intelligence and human.... We might have artificial hearts as well as mind as human organ creation moves ahead into a Brave New World. There will be those true 'humans' ....lost souls etched in the past, who remain one hundred percent human.....and abhor change to become this blend of human/chip. A human chip....an HC. No longer 100% human but a blend. But how much is a blend...80/20....50/50....20/80 and what about 0/100? Yet there they will sit, on the fence...watching humanity slowly shift towards an anomaly itself as these seemingly life forms of nature become a varied mix of chips and the like. As our earth evolves around our sun one too many times, even my grandkids in time, those who might elect to sit on the fence, hoping to remain human,....will die, as all living mass does. But their grandsons and daughters, my great or great great grandsons and daughters will gladly accept the only thing they know...whatever it might be at that time. For we only really accept what we know, right? Those who straddle the fence and between the posts, only last until their experiences fail to stretch to the deep and then, they vanish. A pure human will be an anomaly perhaps admired or lured to thought in history books alone.  So the 'fence' will be moved into a no-man's land and pushed past who we are as selves.

View your birds....sparsity or not....relish their simple movement and complex migration....they are not yet quite an anomaly.

Not a lot of time this past month to Bird or BLOG, even though it has been the start of Migration..... 

Why you ask? Can you say work....work....work? Do some of you recall  that evil term? Work...egads...work, Did you say work?

Work at times is equal to the brown paper bag that the drunk carries his bottle in...

Work at times is equal to sneaking a donut now and then...(did anyone see me eat that donut?)

Work...can be like the dentist without novacane.

Work can be like the tail end of a vacation when you are making the long trip home.

Work is like election night when your side lost....especially this time around. 

Work is like taking a whole roll of film with my camera and forgetting I put film in it. (Yes, I still use film at times).

Work is equal to a cat scratch that itches at 2 in the night.

Work is like that hiking in the woods with wet shoes.

Work is essentially unlike bird watching. But the above video does show a Saturday Bird walk as we hung out at Gull Tower...... no work there.