In the Beginning

Since moving to Central Florida from Pennsylvania years ago, there has been a long process of acclimation occurring. The landscape change even more than the climate change has been particularly tough to adjust to. Slowly I learned to appreciate things around me; first the wild activity in the summer sky as clouds visibly boiled into thunderheads; the enormous diversity in landscape and habitat just in a ten or twenty-mile drive. Long a race fan, my photo albums slowly gave over from photographs of race action and pit-stops to storm-swept skies and beach scenes. The more I shot, the more I found to shoot.

Birds appeared everywhere. Hundreds of gulls; raptors playing on thermals; the ubiquitous sandhill cranes. The first things to force me into the library for birding books were the gulls. What WERE they all? And what in the world were those things with the huge bills that were longer on the bottom than on the top? Was that thing I saw at Disney a cormorant? What was a cormorant anyway, and why did I even know the word?

Well, the gulls are excruciating. There are not just dozens of species of gulls, but each particular gull can look entirely different, I learned, according to season and age of the gull. What looked like two completely different gulls were in fact the same gull at different periods of development. Only a complete nutcase would take this any further (and I've read completely respected authorites in the birding world who, knowing better than I do, turn their backs on the mystery of gulls as too twisted to unravel; they had other things to do with their time.) What does it say about me that I'm not following their lead, but am still puzzling out the four-year gulls, juvenile gulls, winter gulls, and deciding I may never be completely happy with many of the tentative identifications I've made?
It's not just the gulls that make me want to run screaming from the whole concept of birding; you can't bird in solitude. You are, maybe unwittingly, part of a community, and as such, there are responsibilities that come with it. You may see something that doesn't belong where you saw it. Are you sure of your identification? Do you post it for other people to check out, or are you still nervous about the Eastern Meadowlark that you thought had to be a Williamson's Sapsucker and how stupid you felt when you realized what nonsense you'd almost been guilty of? The problem with birding from photographs is this: you're out in the sun, fat dumb and happy, snapping away. When you get home and sit at the computer to work on your pictures, something doesn't look right. You notice that the two pictures you have of redwing blackbirds taken on Merritt Island on consecutive days are not the same bird. In fact one of them is definitely a redwing blackbird, while the other has not yellow but white or beige
under the red on the wing. Is it a trick of the late morning light or are you seeing something that is not supposed to be in Central Florida - a tricolored blackbird? They are SO not supposed to be here that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission doesn't even include them on the Florida State birdlist.

ICTERIDAE — BLACKBIRDS
□ Bobolink
□ Red-winged Blackbird B
□ Tawny-shouldered Blackbird R
□ Eastern Meadowlark B
□ Western Meadowlark R
□ Yellow-headed Blackbird
□ Rusty Blackbird
□ Brewer's Blackbird
□ Common Grackle B
□ Boat-tailed Grackle B
□ Shiny Cowbird
□ Bronzed Cowbird
□ Brown-headed Cowbird B
□ Orchard Oriole B
□ Hooded Oriole R
□ Bullock's Oriole R
□ Spot-breasted Oriole E, B
□ Baltimore Oriole

The last time there was a verified sighting of a tricolored blackbird in Florida, Moses was a boy. You think sheepishly about that Williamson's Sapsucker and decide you need to be more sure before you say anything. To compound the issue, you took the picture in July and only noticed this discrepancy in November, so there is no hope of anyone checking this sighting. Being a moral person, you feel great trepidation, and are more convinced than ever that you must photograph every different bird you see....and try harder to find out what you're seeing in a reasonable time frame. (Good luck with that one. Maybe I'm going to have to rename the blog. 'The Renegade Birder.' 'The Closet Birder.' 'Late-night Birder.' Hmmnnnn. This is gonna take some thought.)
S L O W L Y, I'm learning. That thing at Disney was an anhinga; the bird with the weird bill longer on the bottom than the top was, of course, a black skimmer; I now know a cormorant when I see it; the gulls I'm still working on. These gulls and the terns are gonna kill me. In the meantime........

Keep an eye on the sky - but save one for the other drivers.