Alright, I admit it, I am a bird nerd. I think about birds, birding, bird feeding and all things birdy almost all the time. Obsession might be a strong word but it also might be appropriate.
You see I get fifteen to twenty emails a day, every day, telling me what birds are being seen in Maine and where. I also get a few more emails telling what birds are being seen in the surrounding states and provinces, just in case. I also get a few email "alerts" for rare birds seen in Maine, in the United States and other alerts about which birds have been seen in Maine that I haven't seen in Maine ever, or at least this year. So when I am in a meeting in Portland and a Northern Lapwing ( a European bird rarely seen on this side of the pond) is seen in a town an hour away, I can discreetly excuse myself and go see if it is still there. (It wasn't.)
I watch the weather with birds in mind. Wind out of the west? Will it bring the cave swallows being seen in upstate NY our way? Freezing temperatures in northern Maine?Frozen ponds mean the ducks and geese will be here soon!
Whenever I am driving anywhere, I am always scanning the surrounding woods, ditches, treetops, fields, wires and yards for birds. I have actually gotten pretty good at identifying birds on the move. It makes my wife nervous, I'm not sure why.
This is a great talent to impress people with, like last week, I was driving down the road with a nonbirding friend:
Me: "Hey did you see those pine grosbeaks back there?
Him: "No, whats a pine grosbeak?
Of course we turned around.
Him: "How did you see them just driving by?"
Now I have known pine grosbeaks from growing up in Northern Maine where they were the "gorby" birds that my mother didn't like because they ate all the bird seed. I also knew from my bird alerts and emails that pine grosbeaks were being seen all over the state in almost every town and in almost every crabapple tree. I also had been on this road a few days before and they were a few houses down on a different tree so I knew they were in the neighborhood. But what I said was...
Me: "I'm surprised you didn't see them! You weren't driving and they're on your side of the road."
I had to keep the mystery of my amazing bird sighting power alive.
I know, I know, this sounds dangerous, especially in traffic, with multiple lanes, at high speeds. Nothing wakes my wife up faster than crossing three lanes of traffic and merging into three more lanes at a good clip and saying, "Wow, did you see that hawk!"
