Advice from a small town girl

I was listening to a radio piece about bird watching the other day. The reporter was talking about how all the newest gadgetry had changed what used to be a fairly humble pastime into a competitive high-tech sport.

I’ve always imagined real bird watchers as bespectacled, mild-mannered people with extremely powerful binoculars slung around their necks and field guides in their hands. Or pockets.

But, apparently, the species has evolved. Cell phones, GPS positioning, high-tech digital media, websites and more have made bird watching a pastime for the well-heeled.

Not me (I?).

Of course, I’m not really a bird watcher. I’m more of an accidental observer. I do own a pair of binoculars, but they never seem to be handy when I need them. And those darned birds just won’t sit still.

Chances are pretty good that I’ll never travel to find a bird. Well, maybe to Marlin.

I prefer to let the birds come to me. And come they do. I never think to write down the date and what I’ve seen, so I keep my “life list” in my head. Probably not the safest place.

Every spring I note the first robin, the first Western Meadowlark, the first killdeer (and especially the first baby killdeer, who seem to spring from the egg as tiny, exact copies of Mom and Dad.) Every autumn I note (not literally, you understand) the first dark-eyed junco to visit the feeder. Then there are the ubiquitous house finches, sparrows and red-winged blackbirds.

Goldfinches, Northern flickers, feisty Western and elegant Eastern kingbirds, doves, barn swallows, cliff swallows, house wrens, crows and magpies seem to be around most of the time. And of course the starlings. I seldom see the canyon wrens, but hear their laughter nearly every day.

Then there are the special birds.

There is my pet pterodactl, an enormous great blue heron who occasionally gets tired of fish and shops for pocket gophers in the alfalfa field.

One time (only one time), there were nine wild turkeys on the hillside behind the barn. The tom was on full display for about a half hour, then he and his harem trailed up the bluff and into the sagebrush.

There was one lazuli bunting a few years ago, and a kingfisher watching the creek from the railroad bridge.

A bald eagle has soared in lazy circles above my house. Hawks in all sizes from the songbird-sized kestrel up to big flashy red-tails.

Last spring I had a sophisticated-looking pair of cedar waxwings who stayed around for a few days, then decided to move on.

This spring, a rufous-sided tow-hee could be seen busily scratching in my flower beds. I know the bird guide says we have spotted towhees here rather than rufous-sided, but I beg to differ.

Sometimes I see the brilliant orange flash of an oriole in the box elder trees, and occasionally find a finely-woven hanging nest at the end of the season.

Last week a pair of unidentified doves spent a few days in the same big trees. I don’t know what they were – they were enormous. Their heads and necks resembled ring-necked turtle doves, but their tails were more like those of band-tailed pigeons. I can’t decide whether to be sad that they moved on before I could tell what they were, or to be thrilled that I would no longer have to listen to the loud, constant “hoo-HOO-hoo.”

I occasionally see great horned owls, and have seen a tiny screech owl (dead, unfortunately), a snowy owl, a barn owl, with its spooky solemn face.

My husband keeps telling me he sees bluebirds, but I haven’t been that lucky. It’s one of those “I’ll believe it when I see it myself” kind of events.

Canada geese passed us by this spring. We usually have three or four pair that try to set up housekeeping in the coulee. And there used to be families of mallards living along the creek.

I’ve seen a gaggle of geese and a murder of crows. I’ve seen huge snow-white pelicans sailing on a lake just off Highway 28. I’ve seen swans and sandhill cranes passing overhead. Sometimes I can even hear the whoosh of their wings.

I know I’ve missed a number of birds in this list, but it’s not too bad for someone who doesn’t really pay attention.