AREYOUINSANE.net

Back in 1985, Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird came out. It was a big deal. It was Sesame Street’s first movie, it had marketing tie-ins with Wendy’s, and getting a 1980’s kid to prioritize Wendy’s over McDonald’s or Burger King was no small feat.

You can argue that was technically birding. You were watching and following a (Big) bird.

Well, no, actually, I guess that’s more birdwatching. Because, you’re just sitting there, watching, with no effort required on your part except paying $3.50 (Yes, that’s how much a movie ticket cost in 1985) to see the movie.

Birding is different. It’s active. You have to go seek out the birds, find them in the wild (even if “the wild” is a park in the middle of a major city), track them as they move and fly around, and do your best to get a good look at them when they stop, so you can identify them. You learn their songs, learn their migratory patterns, how they look in-flight, and what parts of the country they’re found in.

All the while you’re peering through binoculars, so it’s basically stalking, but with birds… and very fun. It’s just a lot of fun to hunt down birds, without actually hunting them, so nobody (or no bird) gets hurt. (As opposed to catch-and-release fishing, which, let’s face it, is gaslighting hungry fish so that you can injure their mouths, and then take a picture with it while it’s temporarily suffocating. Which I also enjoy.)

My wife and I used to love to bird. She’s quite good at identifying birds in flight. I was pretty decent at identifying birds by their songs. Every time you went out birding was an adventure.

It’s a lot fun to seek out a hard-to-find bird. There’s a thrill you get when you see a bird that you’ve never seen before and add it to your life list. My wife and I once took a trip into the Hill Country of Texas just to find a Golden-Cheeked Warbler, an endangered bird species that now in America can only be found in a small pocket of Texas.

I say that my wife and I used to love to bird, but the truth is that we still do. (Paraphrasing Mitch Hedberg: I used to like to bird. I still do, but I used to too.) We don’t get much opportunity to go on those kinds of excursions these days now that we have three kids, though. Ideally, you could bring your kid birding, but it’s so hard for them to find birds in trees, especially the small ones, and even harder for them to see a bird you’re actively trying to point out to them. (Binoculars don’t help either. Giving a kid a binoculars, you might as well be placing a sleep mask on their face.)

Me: Look! There’s a warbler in that tree over there!
6 yo: Where? I don’t see it!
Me: Okay, you see that tree there?
6 yo: No.
Me: That tree.
6 yo: That tree?
Me: No, that tree.
6 yo: That tree?
Me: No, that tree.
6 yo: That tree?
Me: The tree at 11 o’clock from us.
6 yo: Where?
Me: Okay, if you look straight ahead and then a little to the left… no, to the left… that way, yeeees, okay, that tree. Now look towards to the top of the tree but a little to the right… no, to the right… look where I’m pointing. There’s a small bird sitting on that branch that goes outwards.
6 yo: Where?
Me: It’s right— oh, it just flew off. Did you see it fly off?
6 yo: No. I didn’t get to see it!!!
Me: Well, there will be more birds, let’s keep going.
6 yo: How much more walking is there?
Me: (sigh)

It takes a kind of focus and patience that a lot of kids just don’t have, but I will say, my 6 year old loves fishing and that also requires a great deal of patience.

You don’t have to set out to bird to end up birding. Birds are everywhere, and sometimes you just find yourself surrounded by them (but not in a bad Alfred Hitchcock way), especially during migration season. That’s exactly what happened to me last week in Orange County, while I was visiting some family, taking their dog out for a walk.

First, there was a red-tailed hawk at the top of medium-sized tree. Big enough that even the kids couldn’t miss it to appreciate its majesty.

Directly across from this tree was this Northern Mockingbird. Since I wasn’t expecting to be birding, I didn’t have any binoculars, so I relied on the zoom on my iPhone’s camera, which was suprisingly good. It was clear I was out of practice with bird identification; I didn’t even correctly recognize this as a mockingbird. It’s Jay-sized. It’s gray. It must be a Gray Jay! A Canada Jay! Even though we’re nowhere close to Canada! (I was politely corrected by Reddit, which I appreciate.)

At this point, my dormant instincts awoke, the excitement came back, and I was in 100% birding mode. I called my wife and told her to get out here, because there was a bird bonzana going on.

Next up, a sparrow. One of the tougher parts of birding is that so many birds fit the description “small brown bird”. And even birds that aren’t brown are often brown when they’re juvenile. Sure, there are different identifying visual features, but they’re small and they’re brown, in trees, which are also brown so it’s not that easy to pick up.

Here’s where the zoom capability of the iPhone camera really impressed me (I promise you this isn’t a paid advertisement for Apple):

I thought it was Lark Sparrow, but enlisted the help of r/whatbirdisthis on Reddit, who informed me that it was in fact, a Song Sparrow.

We saw a House Finch perched on top of a tree.

A Black Phoebe on a roof gutter.

A couple of hummingbirds, as well. The lighting and sun made it difficult for me to pick out the color patterns of the hummingbirds, but I caught a video of one and it flies and hovers like a hummingbird. It was identified as an Anna’s Hummingbird by r/whatbirdisthis.

And what I think is an Allen’s hummingbird.

None of these were new birds for my life list, but just being out there and spotting birds was fun again. It’s a new year. I’m not about to do a “Big Year” like in the movie, but I’m going to keep my eyes (and iPhone) open for birds a little more this year, and hopefully keep you updated on AYI.

Then again, you know how New Year’s resolutions go. Check back with me in a few months.