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Archive for the ‘Birds’ Category

Birding Africa

Posted in African Safari, aging, Birds, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , on September 9, 2024| 1 Comment »

Joseph (center) stands with Kim (far right) and me (between the two) and another couple as we wait for a plane to pick us on a small grass runway serving Little Governor’s Camp in Kenya in 2007.

Aging my Way

As I continue to read Arjan Dwarshuis’ book, The (Big) Year That Flew By, I come across places where he is birding that are places I’ve also birded, notably Tanzania and Kenya, where I spent two weeks in 2007 birding their national parks.    In Tanzania, we had an awesome native guide named Bilal who was really into the big cats, as was my travel companion Kim. I feel sure, especially since Kim has told me, that I was a nuisance at times because I kept hollering stop every time I saw a bird.

But in Kenya, one of our native safari guides was Joseph, who seemed to be in as much of an awe of birds as I was. I never even had to tell him to stop because he did so whenever a bird came in sight. I remember one instance where he chased down a pelican so we could get close enough to identify its exact species.

It turned out to be a pink-backed pelican, which was a life bird for me. Joseph had been hoping it would have been a great white pelican, which would have been a life bird for him.

I mention my awesome African adventure because in Kenya, one of Arjan’s native guides was named Joseph. I can’t help but wonder if he might have been the same Joseph I birded with. While it’s a big wide world out there, when you narrow it down to avid bird enthusiasts, you’ve made it a whole lot smaller.

So, what do you think?  

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Morning Bird Sounds

Posted in African Safari, aging, Birds, Journeys, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged , , on September 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »

While it was far from Arjan’s record-breaking number, I did see 182 bird species during my two-week safari in Kenya and Tanzania, including this Hamerkop sharing a water hole with zebra. The fantastic trip with my best friend, Kim, was also balm to my wanderlust soul. — Photo by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

“Just before sunrise, I am woken up by the deep, foghorn-like song of an Emu. What a great sound to wake up to,” writes Arjan Dwarshuis in The Big (Year) That Flew By. The book is about his quest to break the record for seeing the most bird species in a single year. He did, in 2016, counting 6,852 species. And the record still stands.

It was a journey across six continents through 40 continents. I chose to read the account of his incredible adventure because at heart I have wanderlust in my soul. I’ve also been an avid birder since 1999, the year I turned 60 and realized I needed a hobby that wasn’t quite as strenuous as white-water rafting or tennis.

Suddenly, where I had seldom seen birds, I couldn’t not see birds, which I found fascinating.

But one of my first discoveries as a birder was that it wasn’t always something done sedately. Some bird species can only be found at the tops of high mountains and some only in places where no roads exist. Thankfully I saw a few of those before my hardy adventuring days were over.

These days, I mostly bird in my own small, patio yard or on a gentle path, not necessarily paved, that can accommodate my rollator — a four-wheeled contraption that I can hold onto for balance and which also has a seat — I note this for those unfamiliar with such things.

 Some days I simply sit in it and listen to all the bird songs around me while an app called Merlin identifies the birds by sound for me. Knowing what birds are around often helps me find them with my eyes.

I also often awake to the coos of Mourning Doves, the screeches of a pair of Gila Woodpeckers that like to steal the nectar from my hummingbird feeders, and the chirp, chirp, chirping of House Sparrows – birds that visit my yard daily.

 While not as exotic as waking up to the foghorn-ish song of an Emu, listening to the sound of any bird is still a great way to wake up to. And reading about Arjan’s wondrous adventures chasing birds invigorates my wanderlust soul anytime of the day.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Instruction Manuals: Read Any Good Ones?

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, tagged on August 21, 2024| 1 Comment »

Read any good instruction manuals lately? Art by Pat Bean.

Aging My Way

OK. I admit it. I’ve always been a person who turns to an instruction manual only when everything else fails. I’m always sure I can figure out whatever contraption needs to be figured out without any help.

ometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, which is probably a good thing because it keeps my ego in check

But the world is changing too fast, and my stubbornness and impatience isn’t helping me stay caught up with its rapidly changing technology.  I still, after years, don’t know how to use all the potential possibilities of my phone, and my new Fitbit has me even more befuddled.

What I would really like are good instruction manuals. Ones I can hold in my hands, and slowly peruse. Ones that explain things in logical order, instead of making me go from page two to page seven for complete instructions.

Finding such a manual these days, however, isn’t easy, particularly for technical gadgets like computers, phones or Fitbits. You have to go online, and you have to know the exact model of your gadget, and hopefully you have the latest update of it, to find instructions you may, or may not understand.

As for how-to videos, they usually leave me more confused than before, probably because they expect me to already have more tech knowledge than I do. Such videos put me back in the 1980s, when I bought my first computer and quickly discovered my six-year-old granddaughter knew more about how to operate it than I did.

Thank goodness I have another granddaughter living nearly. And she has a tech-savvy wife, too. Between the two of them, they keep my gadgets up and running. And they don’t bother me with all that tech gibberish of how such gadgets work because they’ve come to understand that my only real interest is which button to push to make it do what I want it to do.

So, who needs instruction manuals anyway? But it would be nice.                

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, wand these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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In My Own Backyard

Posted in aging, Birds, Journeys, Uncategorized, tagged , on August 11, 2024| 1 Comment »

Male Hooded Oriole

“Nature is never boring. If you pay attention, you will always see, hear, smell or feel something surprising, whether you are walking around in a tropical rainforest or in your own backyard.” – Arjan Dwarshuis, from his book, The (Big) Year That Flew By.

Aging My Way

As I’m reading Arjan’s book – which takes readers on a year-long journey around the world in which the author saw a record-breaking 6,852 birds in a single year — I’m watching the rain pour over the gutters outside my patio door. It’s monsoon season in Tucson and it’s been a wet and windy one.

I treasure Arjan’s words because the only place I’ve been bird and nature watching recently has been my own small patio yard. It’s a shady place with two oleander trees, a tall cottonwood, and a potted rubber tree plant that I’ve owned for over 30 years. Birds, enticed even more by seed and nectar feeders, love it.

The most recent and spectacular avian visitors have been a pair of hooded orioles, the male a bright gold and the female a bright yellow. They hang around, and feed from the nectar feeder.

Hey Arjan! I’m paying attention.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Foot-in-Mouth Problem

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , on August 7, 2024| 3 Comments »

I wonder what this little feller is trying to say. — Art by Pat Bean

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw

Aging My Way

As a writer, one would think I would be a good communicator. After all, that’s the primary purpose of writing.  And, if I might be a bit immodest, after 60 years of doing it, I think I do it quite well.

But when it comes to the spoken word, I fail quite miserably. I’m always using the wrong word, the wrong tone, or simply the wrong connotation. And it often gets me in trouble.

My brain seems to work better with my fingers on a keyboard than they do with my vocal cords. Simply put, I have foot-in-mouth-disease. My newspaper reporter colleagues used to even joke: “It’s a good thing Pat Bean doesn’t write the way she talks.”

While they might have been talking about my Texas accent, I think it went farther than that. In my defense, I always spell people’s name correctly – well after the first time I was embarrassed in print by calling someone Mary, when she actually spelled her name Mari.

After that, asking someone to spell their name was always the first question out of my mouth. And it’s a good think I did, because I discovered there were several other variations of the simple name Mary, not to mention what parents did with other supposedly common names.

I was thinking about this after coming across a bit of trivia this morning that noted there were over 7,000 languages spoken around the world. How did this come about? It’s no wonder people in this world can’t get along. They can’t understand each other.

Meanwhile, after my latest spoken communication gaff that unintentionally left some hurt feelings, I’ve decided perhaps I should spend more time writing than talking.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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I’m Taking Einstein’s Advice

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing on July 10, 2024| 3 Comments »

          “Someone just honked to get me out of my parking space faster, so now I have to sit here until both of us are dead.” – Facebook post that had be belly laughing.

Aging My Way

OK. I give up. I’ve been trying to write a blog for over two weeks now. I get a good start on one, say about 200 words, which is about half the number of words in an average blog, and then I get stuck. What I’ve written goes into the trash, or sometimes in a file to be relooked at another day.

Well, if I’m to believe Albert Einstein, who says “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it,” I need to try a different approach.

So, at least for a little while, my blog is simply going to be a sharing of my art and a quote that is meaningful to me. I also want to restart my Bean Pat feature, which is a pat on the back to something I, personally, like.

And today’s BEAN PAT is for writers and goes to Dawn Downey’s One Damn Fine Sentence blog.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

 

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Living in a Changing World

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing, tagged , on June 20, 2024| 4 Comments »

I titled this Jungle Aviary. Keeping up with today’s changing world is as hard as finding the possible birds in this charcoal drawing. Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I was born in 1939, before going to the moon and beyond was hardly even a dream. It was a world in which every home didn’t have a television, computers didn’t exist — and racism was rampant.

While the N word was never spoken in my home, and my parents didn’t believe they were prejudiced, I was taught that separate but equal was the right way to live when it came to Blacks and Whites.

Observing the world, especially as a young reporter, I quickly realized how laughable that belief was. The deck was stacked against anyone but the WASPs.

Then came my acknowledgement that sexual orientation comes in more than two flavors — and I quickly saw that the world was a hard place for those who didn’t fall into one of those two categories. Sadly, my youngest brother was one of those. I don’t think he even accepted himself, and he became one of the early victims of AIDS.

I would like to think the world is an easier place for one of my own children, who came out as gay back in the early 1980s. And even easier – although rarely anyone of whatever persuasion has an easy life – for my dear granddaughter and her dear wife who live next door to me and have become my emergency caretakers.

Meanwhile, the world has changed so much that at 85, I’m having trouble keeping up. And yesterday, I committed what today has become a politically incorrect blunder.

My cardiologist’s medical assistant spoke in a heavily accented voice, and I was having problems understanding him. At one point, I asked him where he was from. “California,” he replied.

After he left, I looked at my granddaughter, who had taken me to my doctor’s appointment, and said: “I shouldn’t have asked that, should I?”

“It’s become a very diverse America, Nana,” my granddaughter replied, noting that she had just completed 40 hours of diversity training for her new job.

Gads! It’s hard keeping up with today’s world, especially at 85. But I guess if I’m going to keep on breathing, I need to keep on trying.

Be kind out there everyone!

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Sunshine and Rain

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing on May 20, 2024| 3 Comments »

The saguaro are currently blooming in Tucson, thanks to the rain and sun we’ve enjoyed this spring. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

When you’re 85, and if you’re lucky, your head is full of memories, and you never know when one of them is going to pop up. Like this morning when I was reading a post by Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writing-advice authors.

She was talking about taking a walk with an old friend and mentioned that they were wearing raincoats because although it was sunny, it was drizzling off and on. “In my family, we always announced during a sun shower that it must be a monkey’s birthday somewhere,” she wrote.

Her family was more positive than mine, because on reading those words I clearly heard my Southern grandmother say that if it were raining and the sun was shining, then the devil must be beating his wife.

Another saying for a day when the sun is shining through the rain, wrote Lamott, is that it’s a day when the foxes are having a wedding.

 A bit of research turned out there were even more old sayings for such a day, including a witch making butter in Poland and day for a parish fair in Germany. And in the Appalachians in this country, the locals might also say that the devil is kissing his wife.

Now I have even more memories stuffed into this old brain of mine. I’m just glad to be remembering some of them.     

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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A Healed Heart and Cacti

Posted in aging, Birds, Favorite Places, Journeys, Writing, tagged on April 16, 2024| 13 Comments »

Yellow is the color of happiness and sunshine, both of which I intend to enjoy whenever I can. — Photo by Pat Bean

It’s morning. I’m sitting in front of my computer, writing. It’s exactly where I belong. And it feels wonderful. A feeling I haven’t had in quite a while.

The truth is, I’ve spent the past year slowly dying – and not knowing it. My heart was failing me, but without any symptoms, which I’ve been told isn’t uncommon for women, I simply attributed my sluggishness to being 84 years old, and a worn-out knee, which was successfully replaced on March 20.

Eight days later, I had a major heart attack, which in reality probably saved my life. Thanks to today’s awesome medical technology, I had three stents placed in my heart, and when I looked in the mirror this morning, I saw something I hadn’t been seeing for months.

A happy old broad, who will turn 85 in two days, was staring back at me. Hair mussed, wrinkles in abundance, but blue eyes sparkling and a smile that cheered my healing heart. And a saggy body that didn’t feel like it wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep the day away.

Picture of the Day

Gypsy Lee parked amid the cacti at New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

To give myself an incentive to start blogging regularly again, I came up with the idea of sharing one of the pictures that drops into my email daily as a memory from the past. The one I’ve chosen today is one of my RV, Gypsy Lee, in which I traveled fulltime around the country in from 2004 to 2013.

She is parked among the cacti in New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park, a treasure located near our border with Mexico. It recalls a peaceful week there enjoying the history and beauty of the area and as always birdwatching, an activity I took up when I was 60 years old.

Gambel quail abounded, and there was a roadrunner that frequently perched on a fallen branch in full view of a window where I ate my morning breakfast. Thrashers, red-wing blackbirds, cactus wren and white-winged doves were often seen.

As I think back now on those treasured days, I’m ever so thankful I didn’t miss one of them. Life is for living as well as dreaming, although I think all my adventures did begin with the latter. If I had to mark a beginning to my wanderlust dreams, I think it began when I was 10 years old and read a book called I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson.

It took me awhile to figure out that one didn’t have to be married to have adventures, but we’ve come a long way since I read that book back in the 1940s.

And now, thanks to modern-day medicine, I’m hoping to discover that adventures are still possible for 85-year-olds.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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The Murder of Crows

Posted in aging, Birds, journalism, Journeys, Writing, tagged on January 31, 2024| 3 Comments »

Old Crow art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I’m reading A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett. It’s a cozy mystery with an ecologist as the protagonist. With all the many, many books out there to choose from, I was attracted to this one simply because of the title. You see, I once was a member of a small group that called itself The Murder of Crows.

The group membership numbered a half dozen women or so, all well past the age innocence, with marriage, children, divorces and life experiences in our varied backgrounds.

  We met once a week for lunch and got together occasionally for other activities and events. Our conversations were filled with interesting chatter, raucous laughter, irreverent remarks and commentary about politics and world events. We were a liberal group with four journalists, in various capacities, among us.

 I was in my early 40s when I was introduced to the group by a younger female colleague at the newspaper where I had just been hired. She didn’t stick around long, however, as she soon departed to a job in another state. But by that time, I was firmly ensconced in the group.

 We got our name from one of the women’s teenage sons who referred to us as a bunch of old crows. Instead of being insulted we started calling ourselves The Murder of Crows, which is actually the proper name for a group of crows.

We stayed together for the next 20 years or so before moves and deaths begin taking their toll. Only three members were left behind when I retired in 2004, sold my home and took off to tour America in a small RV. I kept in touch, but while I was traveling around another member died, and then after I settled in Tucson in 2013, one more death occurred.

That’s what happens to friends when they reach their eighth decades of life. I got to visit with the other lone Murder of Crows’ member when I visited my old hometown last September. And I got a nice long snail mail letter from her a couple of weeks ago.

While I hope there will be many more visits and letters, I know it’s important that I treat each treasured get-together and letter as if it were the last – because it just might be.

Now I think I will stop here and go write that return letter to one of the last two still-standing Murder of Crows’ members. It’s important to me.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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