How I, LittleOrangeLibrarian, was Converted to Birding

Today we are heading home from a week-long trip which took us to West Virginia and Washington, DC. Every 30 minutes or so I pull out the Peterson's (Birds of Eastern and Central North America) to look something up. Just saw a hawk! By now I know to go straight to p.102 for hawks. Couldn't see the tail clearly enough to tell whether it was a red-tail or a broad-wing, but Dr Stratton informs me that we are in red-tail country so that's most likely what it was. Something happened to me while my butt and toes were freezing off last Thursday morning near Fayetteville, West Virginia. I fear that I have become a birder.

Last Wednesday Sara and I drove down to West Virginia to go to the New River Nature and Birding Festival. Sara has been a novice birder for a couple of years now; my role has been to make fun of her as she stands at the bedroom window with binoculars when she's supposed to be getting ready for work, or as she walks into a recycling bin while walking along the sidewalk with her eyes focused skyward, or as she nearly veers into oncoming traffic because she's watching a hawk overhead. She told me I could come with her to the Festival as long as I did not call anyone a bird nerd.

On Thursday morning we had to get up at 5 am, which is a little too close to the middle of the night in my opinion. Our first day (6 am to 2 pm) was to be spent "Birding by Butt." This was a totally entry-level session; we started by looking at a bird's nest in a tree (a little lichen bowl made by a blue-gray gnatcatcher) through a scope set up by our leaders; a nest is very helpful in that it doesn't move around.

They offered loaner binoculars to those of us who had crappy ones (e.g. $25 Bushnells). Now, I had never had much luck with the crappy Bushnells or the decent Bushnells that Sara uses; I could see through one eye sort of but not through the other. Apparently I was binocular-challenged, so I made sure I had books, knitting, and an ipod to keep me from being bored in West Virginia.


HOWEVER, it turned out that I could see through the loaner binoculars; in fact, I could see quite clearly. All by myself, I saw the blue-gray gnatcatcher fly to its nest and tuck some more lichen into it. I saw something in the woods (which I have since identified as a phoebe using Peterson's and my week's experience). Somewhere in there I heard a wood thrush, which has a beautiful, distinctive, wooden-flute-like song. One of the leaders played it for us at a much-reduced speed and it sounded like whale song. A little later I saw a black vulture and some turkey vultures flying overhead, and I learned how to tell them apart. (This morning we saw a t.v. -as we call them in the birding biz- on one side of the road eating roadkill, and a few feet along on the other side we saw an old wooden console T.V.: nice visual pun.)

This was the approximate time of my epiphany. You can't see it in the picture, but I am actually floating an inch or two off the ground, and Dave's angel wings are obscured by the shirt.

Anyhoo, I quickly bought me a pair of those loaner binoculars, and we took our new best friend Murr and went to Carnifex Ferry Battleground State Park for the afternoon, where the three of us craned our necks at the trees, binoculars held high.


The next day my highlights were an indigo bunting, a Baltimore oriole, and a hooded warbler (more about him in a later blog). The last day of the Festival I saw bobolinks and a golden-winged warbler. In fact, I saw lots of assorted warblers with very unhelpful names, but I guess you get used to that, like you get used to the fact that purple finches are not purple.

I became a birder in the face of extraordinary adversity: a leader who laughed at me because I had never heard of a bobolink (possibly he had been drinking); a slap from an expert birder from Delaware (probably I deserved it); a leader who actually called me Karen despite the fact that I was wearing a name-tag which identified me as Kelly; a lunch which consisted solely of white, carb-laden foods (white was a bit of a theme at this Festival), including corn bread "salad" (ok - everybody faced that particular hardship); and not a few digs at my lack of verticality (the sleeves on my Festival t-shirt go down to my knees, which will be advantageous if my arms happen to lengthen as I age).

In the end, I came away with (in no particular order) 54 birds (41 of them lifers), an inability to sleep past 5 am, some fantastic new friends, a facebook membership, and a hankering to make some new lists and perhaps a huge chart on which I can diagram my birds and their characteristics.

Some of my fantastic new friends.

On Monday I go to Newfoundland with my new binoculars...

P.S. I don't want to make the Festival sound bad. The laughing leader was great when sober; the Delaware expert became a close friend who attempted to teach me how to neigh like a horse; the misidentifying leader was a great guy who was so ashamed of his mistake that he attempted hara-kari (anyway, I can't really complain about someone who can't tell a Kelly from a Karen, since I can't tell all these bloody warblers apart); the food, especially the stuff made by Wendy of Cathedral Cafe, was fantastic; and I love my t-shirt!!!