But I think birdwatching taps into a very honest part of me these days. In years past, I would scramble in my mind to somehow present myself or my knowledgebase in sophisticated ways, feeling as if I don't want to be found out as a fraud. This has happened with day jobs, music, current events. But I've discovered over the years, and this year in particular, that in the best interest of survival and energy conservation, that if you tell the truth and speak to the details you are certain of, you'll be just fine.
So even in something as innocuous as birdwatching, if I'm asked "What is it?", I hear in my mind "What do you see?" And I try to capture details I'm sure I see - the colors, the headshape, whether or not the tail feathers pulse, the stripes and spots, twitches, if the bird is on water or on the ground or atop a perch. Tell the truth, and you'll be just fine.
At the festival, I was trying to identify a bird over the pond. It was black from a distance, soared over the water solo, perched low on a log along the shore, had a white stripe on it's tailfeathers. Probably a Northern Harrier, according to the Bosque Del Apache brochure coupled with my Sibley's Guide information. It would be sexy if it were a Common Blackhawk, as they are rare around these parts. But probably not.
I spoke to a birder on an observation deck about this sighting. He was a volunteer for a group called Hawks Aloft, which participates in conservation and research for native New Mexico birds. I told him what I knew. We deduced together that it was probably a Northern Harrier, even though the Red Tailed Hawks can be dark as well (which makes identifying them somewhat problematic). He said to me "Well, you seem to know your hawks." Nothing could be further from the truth. But I was telling the truth about what I saw, and that was taking me further than I had ever been.
No comments:
Post a Comment