Birds are my Crack

The road to adventure

Been realizing lately that they have always been mega important to me. I started taking notice when I was small and living upstairs over Grandma and Grandpa Montgomery. I remember checking out Common Grackles and American Robins on the sidewalk beside the house while my little brother was racing his wagon down the hill with sometimes dire consequences. I remember the lilacs and lilies of the valley too, but that is another story.

Birds have fascinated me ever since and I have always, always watched. However, there used to be many other things too, horses from infancy, both real and imagined. Dogs, starting with beagles that ate the kitchen linoleum in the same time frame as the grackles and Radio Flyers, and progressing through many amazing creatures, culminating in Border Collies. (Jack Russell Terrier thrown in for comic relief.) And music. There was always music.

Then came cows. They will consume your life. You won't mind.

Now retired from cows, too old, lame, and halt for much to do with horses, down to just one dog, a good boi, but just one, birds remain.

And I am addicted.

Looking for an American Bittern seen by a birder friend yesterday
Didn't find it

I agonize over finding new ones. List compulsively. Am not happy until I have photographed every single one of them. (Haven't met that challenge yet, but I have 211 species with photos on eBird. That's out of 238 species I have technically seen, but there were many more before eBird that I can't document. I saw them though.) 

Probably couldn't have seen if it was perched on the hood ornament

When I can't list, I study, take quizzes, and then study some more. 

And dream about birds at night. I've always thrown myself wholeheartedly into my assorted passions. Now, as other things wane, it's birds, feathers down. (Not to mention down feathers, tee hee.)

Call me obsessive.

But hey, it's a lot of fun. 

This does not mean however, that I am delighted at the Mourning Dove building a nest on a porch pillar right over where I like to sit. Sharing is caring and all, but still.....

And I thought the robins were bad.