My best birding moment鈥損erhaps my only really good one鈥揷ame in Sedona, Ariz., as I stood on a trail next to Rock Creek, waiting for our guide to locate some birds for us. I was staring off into space, as usual, when I locked eyes with a very large owl. I hissed, 鈥淭hat is one giant bird!鈥� Our guide came running and looked at me with amazement. I was the blind dog who somehow found a bone. Then she exclaimed, 鈥淚t鈥檚 a Mexican spotted owl! Very rare in these parts!鈥�
A day later I was asking a ranger about bird-watching spots in Sedona. 鈥淵ou should go down to Rock Creek,鈥� she said. 鈥淪omebody saw a Mexican spotted owl yesterday!鈥�
On the basis of that, I can declare: I am somebody!
Why do people watch birds, anyway? Well, clearly, they鈥檙e not going to watch themselves. But I do it for a lot of reasons. First of all, birds are the descendants of dinosaurs鈥搊r vice versa鈥搘hich I know from watching the Jurassic Park movies. Birds are velociraptors with wings; there鈥檚 no telling what they might do next!
Also, they have cool names. Consider the Lapland Longspur. Or the Bohemian Waxwing. Or the Blue-throated Mountain Gem. You can see each of these birds in our fine state. You just have to stare through binoculars until your eyes bleed.
Which is what half a dozen of your neighbors and I were doing last Saturday, as we gathered in Rolland Moore Park in Fort Collins, to do our part for the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. It鈥檚 just like our national census, only with citizens who fly around, hide in shrubbery, and duck under the water while you鈥檙e trying to count them.
As soon as I left my warm car that morning, I spotted a decoy coyote on the park鈥檚 ballfields. Not everybody loves Canada geese鈥揺specially outfielders. Stepping in poop is a synonym for luck, but it doesn鈥檛 work that way in baseball.
We hadn鈥檛 been bird-counting for more than three minutes when I spotted a pair of lusty mallards attempting to make even more mallards in the chilly waters of Spring Creek. If that ain鈥檛 love, what is? No wonder that species succeeds so well.
We continued our walk in the park, and shouted out improbable IDs of far-distant avians. That鈥檚 when one of my fellow bird counters shared a concept called 鈥渂ird desire.鈥� No, not the kind Mr. and Mrs. Mallard demonstrated. Instead, it is the eagerness of every birder to see something rare鈥揻or instance, a Mexican Spotted Owl, to cite one awesomely impressive example. I tried to turn black crows into golden eagles, and leaves into Red-breasted Nuthatches. But hope is the thing with feathers, as the famous ornithologist Emily Dickinson told us.
We weren鈥檛 the only hopeful people out there, either. At least a dozen times, people stopped our birding group with the impertinent question: 鈥淗ave you seen anything good?鈥� Good how? Is a Cooper鈥檚 Hawk good? A Downy Woodpecker? Nobody seemed particularly impressed with our high-flying haul, even though we clocked thirty species with our eagle eyes.
Even our group had to discipline itself not to say things like, 鈥淥h, it鈥檚 just a common house finch.鈥� Momma Finch didn鈥檛 feel that way when her egg hatched, and we shouldn鈥檛 either.
In fact, if you鈥檙e looking for a life lesson along with your bird count, this is it: There鈥檚 beauty everywhere. The slower you go, the closer you look, the more you see. A brush pile is a bird jewel box, the sky, their boundless ocean. And birds know a kind of freedom we humans can only dream about鈥nless we visit DIA. Even then we have to drive past Blucifer, the haunted stallion who stares with red eyes, reminding us that flying ain鈥檛 natural for the likes of us. But the birds do it, and our imaginations can take flight as well, if we just pay attention.
Late in the day we walked along Spring Creek again, and I spotted Mr. and Mrs. Mallard once more. Their beaks were curved into satisfied smiles. There will be more mallards during next year鈥檚 count, if the fake coyotes don鈥檛 get them.
