About Birds

The bird migration has started, which is big news in this place, because a hill not too far from my house
is one of the most important stopovers for migrating raptors in the upper midwest. Yesterday after the kindergarten bus came and left, The Banana, Mr. Perpetual Mess and I drove over to the hill to see if many birds had arrived yet. We only saw three hawks, but we did see a lot of birdwatchers.

Birdwatching . . . what an interesting hobby! It isn’t a pasttime I’d ever really considered, and although I was aware that there were birdwatching people in the world, I did not realize they were SOOO passionate about their hobby! We saw people of all shapes, sizes and especially ages scrambling all over that hill with binoculors of all makes dancing around their necks. We saw people camped out in lawn chairs gazing at the clear blue sky, dressed in multiple layers of fall clothing. We saw people with enormous television-station size video cameras taping a hawk sitting on a post. Although hawks are very majestic animals, I had a lot more fun people watching! Some of the elderly birdwatchers would get quite excited when a hawk swooped in circles overhead. Scientific looking volunteers were charting the activity of the hawks. And there was one bald man with a camera much like mine, and an extremely rare lens that was 14 times the size of his camera mounted on a tripod. He was pointing the gigantic contraption (I kid you not, the end of this lens was the size of a dinner plate, and it was at least two feet long) at the hawk sititng on the post, waiting with a remote shutter in hand for the moment the hawk did something . . . other than sit on the post, which, incidently, it didn’t do while we were traipsing around for about 45 minutes.

You can’t but help admire the patience of nature photographers, specially when you are used to photographing quick moving kids.

If you look close in this picture you will find excited elderly ladies with binoculars and the little bald photographer in the distance. If you really examine the picture, you will find that hawk . . . sitting on a post.

In other news, I am very, very excited to report that after six long years of owning a bird feeder filled with seed and having no wildlife costumers visit my backyard other than some really ambitious squirrels, a troop of song birds has discovered me! I love sitting on my futon, reading books with my kids, and looking up to see a gaggle of tiny birds out my window.