I've Never Seen a Man Eat So Many Chicken Wings...

I’m on my own for a few days. My wife is away in Louisiana on a drinking trip. I’m kidding. I’m not really kidding. A situation suddenly arose requiring her immediate departure, babies and all, leaving me alone here with the dog. But I’m away at work all day and the dog became lonely and depressed. So I put him in the kennel. Must say I do miss my family, but having them all out of state or confined elsewhere does give me time to get caught up on sleep and other things I don’t normally get to do, like showering.

The “8 Random Facts Meme” got me to thinking about my early birding experiences - back when I didn’t know any other birders, and was so socially inept that it probably wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. In those days I was convinced that most of the birds in the field guides were hopelessly rare. Otherwise why hadn’t I seen them? That I wore glasses and hadn’t yet figured out how to fold back the eye cups on my bins might have had something to do with it. My field of view was microscopic, and it was years before I realized the handicap I'd imposed on myself. Best field guide of the day was the Golden Guide to the Birds of North America. So even if I'd been able to see anything I probably couldn’t identify it from the misleading illustrations. Example...if you have an old copy check out the Sprague’s Pipit. Don’t know what it is, but it isn’t a Sprague’s Pipit.

I really need to give credit to the people who mentored me. In the early 1980s I was living in Mt. Shasta City and attending College of the Siskiyous in nearby Weed (nice campus, lots of pretty scenery). I had a couple of teachers there, Neal Clark and Ken Beatty, who encouraged my interest in birds. In their classes we studied waterfowl and raptors, and went on field trips to places like Coos Bay and the Klamath Basin. Even if the focus of the class was on botanizing or marine biology I brought my binoculars, which I still didn’t know how to use properly.

It was also during my college years that I started travelling in search of birds, and started to meet other birders. I learned a lot from people like Stephen Laymon, David Gaines (sadly no longer with us), and Rich Stallcup. The thing about Rich that made a lasting impression on me, aside from his sense of humor, was that his enthusiasm was not limited to birds. As a naturalist he impressed me with his knowledge and appreciation of other wildlife – a more holistic approach that appealed to me then and now. Incidentally he wrote a very informative book about the deficiencies of the Golden Guide called Birds For Real.

And now for something completely different (PARENTAL ADVISORY).

Sublime.