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Posts Tagged ‘mockingbirds’

Mockingbirds

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Travel, tagged on November 9, 2017| 7 Comments »

Northern mockingbird — Wikimedia photo

“I don’t ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.” — Pete Hamill

I Brake for Birds

Galapagos mockingbird … Wikimedia photo

I was sitting outside with two friends in a small fenced-in park Sunday, drinking coffee and watching our three dogs have a play date. As usual, I was keeping my eye out for birds. Before 1999, when I got bit by the birding bug, I rarely noticed the winged creatures that share the outdoors with us. Today, I can’t not notice birds.

Mourning and white-winged doves were the most prolific this day, along with a flock of rock pigeons that flew together and landed on a utility line. But it was the lone gray bird with white flashing on its wings as it flew past that grabbed my attention.

“Look,” I said “A northern mockingbird.”

Hood mockingbird, which species I saw in the Galapagos, where birds are not afraid of humans. One landed on my foot and tried to get  at my water bottle. — Wikimedia photo

“Umhuh,” said one of the women, while the other one didn’t seem to hear me. They kept on talking, but my mind stayed on the bird, and flashed back to a Christmas Bird Count in 2003, when I was with a group of Audubon birders and we saw the first-ever northern mockingbird spotted in Ogden, Utah, on a Christmas bird count.

The expert birder who was leading the group asked for my confirmation of the ID, doing so because he knew I was a native Texan, and the northern mockingbird is Texas’ state bird. Since I was the newbie birder in the group, I felt honored.

The mockingbird was one of only about three birds I could identify growing up, and then only because all school children were taught about it being the state bird. The first mockingbird on my life list of birds, which I started keeping 18 years ago, was one I saw in Killeen, Texas, in 2001.

I added the hood and Galapagos mockingbirds to my life list in 2005, after seeing them during a trip to the Galapagos Islands in June of 2005, and the Bahama mockingbird was added to my list in 2008 during a visit to the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.

Shortly after I began watching and listing birds, my kids kidded me that I was better at remembering when and where I had seen a specific bird than I was at remembering family birthdays. I think they were right.

      Bean Pat: mybeautifulthings http://tinyurl.com/ya86h9e7 Simple daily things and a poem for lovers of words, like me.

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/y8z7553y  You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

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Seven “Big Years” Chasing Birds

Posted in Birds, Books, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2011| 6 Comments »

“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.” Anais Nin

Snowy egret at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

The landscape around the Texas Gulf Coast home of my son, Lewis, is always full of birds. It is why my binoculars are always sitting beside me when my RV, Gypsy Lee, is parked in his driveway.

Wrens, woodpeckers, warblers, hawks and ducks all visit or pass through his yard.

This morning, Carolina wrens inspected the gutters over his garage, a pair of cardinals sat on the utility wires attached to his roof and a flock of black-bellied whistling ducks flew overhead, alerting me to their presence with their high-pitched chorus as they winged past in V-formation.

Is this a photographer taking picture of birds, or a birdwatcher photographing birds? -- Photo by Pat Bean

The park directly across the street from my son’s home offers even more entertainment for this passionate birder: Logger-head shrikes hang out in the trees, mockingbirds frequently chase away a red-tailed hawk when it comes around and goldfinches hang around the feeders in the yard next to the park.

I sometimes think I might be mistaken for a peeping Tom, or in my case a Jane, because I might appear to be looking in someone’s window when I’m simply watching a ruby-throated hummingbird flitting around the flowers.

If you really want to know how crazy we avid birders are, you should go see the movie, “The Big Year.” It’s about competitive bird watching. Or you can read the book, “The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession,” written by Mark Obmascik. It’s actually a true story and I couldn’t put it down once I started reading.

 

Great-tailed grackles near Surfside, Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Recently, when I was down at the beach – to watch birds of course – I watched another bird watcher as he tried to take a picture of some skimmers. Watching him was almost as much fun as watching the skimmers myself. I wondered if he was more photographer than birder, or more birder than photographer, like me.

We birders are actually a funny, but much blessed lot. The day I realized I had joined the craziness was the day I took a 440-mile, one-day, round-trip drive just to see nesting ospreys.

In fact, many of the 122,000 miles I’ve put on Gypsy Lee the past seven years have been in pursuit of birds – from the elegant trogons in Southeast Arizona, to the marbled murrelets on the Oregon Coast, to the Atlantic puffins in Maine, and the Florida scrub jays in the Everglades.

It’s been one great feathered adventure after feathered adventure.

Perhaps that’s why, at least for a little while, I’m content to simply watch birds from the comfort of my RV that is parked in the driveway of my son.  

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