It started in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When we think about wild places, we think of Yellowstone, Glacier, the Everglades. The U.P. is underestimated. Big mistake.

The place is nearly all wilderness. Bears, wolf packs, moose. Eagles, Pileated Woodpeckers, porcupines. And quiet. The quiet you get when there are few roads. At night you see stars; all of them.

I went birding in the U.P.’s million-acre Ottawa National Forest. Got a trail map, put on bug spray, and headed out carrying only binoculars. No compass. The trail was marked by blue diamond-shaped symbols on trees. That should be enough, right?

Deer flies didn’t matter at first. But after a while the bug gunk stopped working. Bites bled. I’d read about Stanley’s march through the Congo. I didn’t care about bugs. Nobody gets malaria in the North Woods.

I went on, assuming the word “trail” meant a foot path. Yeah, the stupidity of the unprepared.

After a half-hour, the trail faded into undergrowth. Still, because of the shady canopy, undergrowth was walkable. And every so often there were blue diamonds on trees.

The diamonds were far enough apart so that when you reached one, you could just make out the next. After an hour, maybe two, it got difficult. I was past the point of no return. And wanted to return.

But when attempting to backtrack, the diamonds were impossible to find. You could get lost. I had no jacket, no water, no cell phone. Cell phone? Never carry one. Doubt if there was service anyway. So I didn’t go back; I kept going forward.

Couldn’t be much further until the trail ended at a road. An hour later, maybe two, I’m sweating and bug bit. Haven’t seen birds, animals, or the end of the trail.

This lack of wildlife is typical. Real nature is quiet. If you were in a 50-acre preserve outside Chicago you might see thirty species of birds, plus deer and fox. But in a million acres of wild you might see nothing.

There are bears, wolves and every kind of boreal bird. Probably wolverines and cougars. But I didn’t see them. Maybe they saw me. If they did, they saw a guy who was getting tired.

An hour further, maybe two, and I figure I’m near the road. I can sense an opening up there. And, yeah, there’s light through the trees. It’s the road for sure.

I pick up the pace. Gotta get out of the woods, out of these deer flies. I wanted to smell car exhaust. I wanted a roadhouse diner and a roadhouse dinner. A beer. Many beers.

I went through the trees, running the last few steps. And came out into the open. But I wasn’t on a road. I was on the side of a mountain. High up, on a narrow ledge.

To be continued…

Next time: The Birth of “Two Fisted” (Part Two)

Goose watching is not my thing. Around here, you watch your step rather than your geese. Geese are common, and they do what geese and bears do in the woods. Or not in the woods.

But this time of year, geese show that they live by a hard and fast rule of instinctive behavior. And that’s kind of interesting.

We’re near a small woodland lake. If you didn’t see the man-made stuff through the shoreline trees, you could be in the wild Midwest of Pere Marquette when this was a place worth exploring.

The lake’s got trout, snapping turtles, muskrats, Massasauga rattlers, tuba-playing frogs, herons, gulls, ducks and most noticeably in spring, geese.

Canada Geese. A handsome breed that has become as disliked as pigeons for reasons of overpopulation.

Around now, our geese show up. Usually eight pairs. They squawk for a month or two, build sloppy nests, have sex, have kids, then in mid summer they disappear. This is hard-wired, it seems.

Today the lake is frozen. You could ice skate. Coyotes and deer walk on it and leave prints in the snow. The coyotes look well fed. The deer look scrawny. Maybe there’s a connection.

But there are a few geese on the lake. Two here, two there. It’s March, another word for spring. Which is another word for mating. The geese are coming back. But the lake isn’t. It’s frozen fast.

Still, they’re pairing up out there, and you can feel their feisty territorial attitude. With their feet folded they look, in profile, like they’re on water. For them, the calendar means more than the thermometer.

But the thaw will happen. The lake will be choppy wavelets soon. And swimming will be easy. Meanwhile, the geese are following the hard and fast mandate of spring. Even though the lake is still hard and fast.

We recently hid a Steller’s Jay on our website. Part of a contest, but that’s a different story. It got us thinking: Where’d this cool black and blue bird get its name?

When my wife looks over my shoulder at me typing “Steller’s Jay” she asks if I’m spelling it right. Gotta admit, it looks wrong, like it should be Stellar.

But no. Steller’s Jays are named for, and by Georg Wilhelm Steller. (Georg looks wrong too. Shouldn’t it be spelled George? Answer: no). This guy was a naturalist who lived in the 1700s. In addition to the Jay, he discovered and named the Steller’s Sea Eagle, Steller’s Sea Lion, Steller’s Sea Cow and Steller’s Eider.

They say he was the first European to step foot in Alaska, although it wasn’t called Alaska at the time. There’s also a story, if you believe it, that he reported seeing a “sea ape” in the waters near Alaska.

Nobody could verify this. His description makes it sound like a kind of furry otter or seal. It’s interesting to think it was some crypto zoological oddity that was ape-like. If it had been discovered it would probably go on the Steller list: “Steller Sea Ape.”

Steller was shipwrecked on an island near Alaska. Most of the sailors with him died and their camp was bothered by Arctic Foxes. He kept busy over the winter by studying animals and plants on the island, later named Bering Island.

Maybe his interest in these things helped him survive. In any case, he got famous for his discoveries. Not sure if famous is the right word. But he did get to put his name on some species of wildlife, and we use it a lot, all these years later.

I used it here when talking about the Steller’s Jay. If you see this Jay, you’ll use it, too. Steller. Not stellar. But his two-fisted accomplishments make either word work okay.

They say Marilyn Monroe couldn’t do it. Paris Hilton can’t do it. Blondes can’t easily hide. Bright yellow heads turn heads.

When I went looking for a rumored Yellow-headed Blackbird in an out of the way swamp near Chicago I saw these birds from a distance. Didn’t even need binoculars.

They’re something to see, too, because they’re not common this far east. Their range just edges into the western part of Chicago’s sprawl.

Yellow heads are head turners. Maybe that’s why our “Hidden Bird” contest for February didn’t fool anybody.

We got a slew of people who found our hidden Yellow-headed Blackbird, starting from the first day of February. That’s when this bird slunk onto our site, but it couldn’t stay out of sight.

February’s just about over and so is the contest. We’re going to have a drawing soon and announce a winner. Details will be in our “Hidden Bird Contest” page.

But, hey, you’ve still got a day or so to find our Yellow-headed head-turner. Why not join the crowd? You could win something, but even if you don’t it’s fun to make the sighting.

And if you want to scope the real thing, there’s that swamp outside of Chicago. We like to protect our blondes’ privacy, so we can’t get too specific. But if you nose around, somebody’s bound to point you in the right direction.

It’s a gray day with snow patches. Figured I’d stay out of the woods. They’ve been quiet, with nothing much to reveal.

I had other things to do. Like go to a construction site for work-related reasons. I walk around where there are bulldozers. They’re cutting up land that was once a cornfield. No great loss. There are strip malls nearby.

The mud’s red and sludgy. My shoes’ll never be the same. Then I see something not work-related. A brownish bird, too big to be a sparrow, too narrow to be a female starling. It’s on the ground so it’s not a waxwing. Maybe a lady Cardinal? No, it’s neckless.

But forget its looks. The main thing is its wacky behavior: It flies into the sky, vertically, then circles and drops back. And does it again. Way up. Five or six hundred feet. Flits around, then dives back.

I saw something like this in a field guide and remembered. I went back to my car for binoculars, thinking, “You horny little bugger.”

Right I am. I knew what this bird was. It had horns, okay, just as I expected. A Horned Lark. You don’t always see the horns. They’re just pointy feathers. But they come out of a black pattern around the lark’s head, curving into horn-like tufts.

This is the only American lark. Don’t think our Meadowlarks are larks; they’re blackbirds. Why are they called larks? Hey, why are Robins called Robins when they’re not Robins but thrushes? Bird names can make you crazy.

I could see the Horned Lark’s horns when it landed. And through the binoculars I could see its yellow and brown pattern. Yeah, a Horned Lark. First one. I had the certainty that if I’d gone into the wild today, I’d have come up empty. But amid road graders and gravel trucks there was an unusual sighting.

The thing about birding is that this is not unusual. Birds are where they want to be, not where you think they should be.

The hard hats on the site were looking at me. I put the binoculars away and got on with the day. An ordinary wintry day. But I remembered it. I saw a Horned Lark.

Ducks aren’t birds. Sorry. They’re ducks. They float.

Birds are flying postage stamps from exotic places. You see them on land. In trees, fields or unexpected spots. They’re the so-called perching birds, or passerines technically. Or maybe birds of prey, the buteos and accipiters. They’re wild animals. Not sitting ducks.

This winter, this week, today, I’m talking about waxwings, longspurs, grosbeaks, titmice. And there’s hawk action right now. I saw a Harrier, Kestrel and countless Red-tails. And there are eagles, if you look.

Eagles, like coyotes, used to be associated only with back country. Today they’re all over. That’s wild.

Real birding means winter Blue Jays, Northern Shrikes, Ravens, Brown Creepers. A Red-bellied Woodpecker (maybe not a passerine, but close enough). And an Eastern Bluebird in a snowy bush, a shivering bluebird that stayed home in the cold; that’s cool.

In spring there are tanagers and the Yellow-breasted Chat. Bird names can kill you. A chat. You gotta laugh. But that’s birding.

I hate to say it, but to be honest I came across a thawing lake in late winter and there were ducks. Who cares, I figured. But then some were different from the usual Mallards and teals.

Okay, a Bufflehead’s out there. Can’t miss it. I gave it grudging interest. I saw a couple of well-named Wood Ducks in a nearby creek in the woods. They were colorful, worth a moment’s notice I guess.

But then, hold everything: I saw a chubby little Ruddy Duck on the lake. What a wrong name. This duck’s beak is bright blue. The bird namers should’ve called it the bluebill. But no. It’s a Ruddy Duck, even though ruddy means red, not blue. (Yeah, yeah, some people call Scaups bluebills, but that’s a slang name.)

I guess there’s dark redness on this bird’s body, but the beak is its amazing feature. It looks artificial. It looks like it was dunked in a can of bright blue paint. It should be the bluebill. When you see it, you don’t think about anything else. Or maybe it should be called the Odd Duck. It looks odd and doesn’t always show up where it’s expected.

Whatever it’s called or not called, this bird is interesting. I admit it. Ducks don’t count, at least not in my book. Most of the time. But a blue-billed Ruddy Duck, that’s a sighting.

A guy named Greg said to take a look at a real “two-fisted adventure” that just got posted on the web. Greg’s a jungle explorer and all-around Indiana Jones type. So I checked.

He was right.

The story’s hard to believe. But there are pictures: A Golden Eagle tries to rip the back out of an adult White-tailed Deer that’s running for its life. Talons scrape deerhide. The deer’s eyes bulge in terror. A zig-zag maneuver saves its life. And there’s more. With close-ups.

I’ve said that the movie Avatar was about birds. The shots captured in this story might remind you of Avatar’s dive-bombing dragons.

Get out of here and check it out: “Golden Eagle attacks White-tailed Deer at Nachusa Grasslands.” The text and photos are by Eric Walters. It appeared on Illinois Birders’ Forum, a superior website that you’ll like whether you’re from Illinois or not.

Here’s the link to the Eric Walters story and photos: http://www.ilbirds.com/index.php?topic=32809.0

After a while in the wilderness, he wanted get back to his wife and son. He’d been wandering along the Mississippi valley in southern Illinois. About a hundred and sixty-five miles from his home in Henderson, Kentucky. For this guy, that was walking distance.

He set out at his usual steady pace, cutting diagonally across the state through forests, fields and swamps. There were bears, snakes and maybe some dangerous people. He had a gun and knew his way around rough country. But he hadn’t expected so much water. It was ankle deep much of the time.

He said later that his shoes kept slipping off, and this slowed him. Still, he was a tireless walker, doing 45 miles in a twelve-hour day. On dry roads he could walk for stretches at about 8 miles per hour, a running speed for the rest of us.

If you hadn’t known this, you might’ve pegged him for a foppish French dude. He had those manners. And the accent. Yet he was tough.

He slept in the open, and by day kept up the steady pace, making notes about wildlife and birds as he went. He was interested in the pinnated grouse, or Greater Prairie Chicken. And once described a bird he’d seen as a “carbonated warbler,” whatever that might be.

He reached the Ohio, found a ferry to take him across, then walked home. Three and a half days and a hundred and sixty-five miles later, he was in the arms of his wife and son.

The next day, he got up and went for a walk in the country. Why not? He was a hard guy. A two-fisted birdwatcher. They hadn’t heard that phrase yet, back in 1811. They hadn’t heard of this guy either, at the time. But they would eventually know his name: Audubon.

This account is more or less true, based on information in Chapter 6 of “John James Audubon,” by Richard Rhodes. The biography’s long, with details about details. But every once in a while there’s a glimpse into the ruggedness of this character and his times.

In a wild place near the Des Plaines River, way north of Chicago, a hawk flew past like a fighter plane. It was only in sight for a second, but I knew what it was. It had an insignia.

The hawk was smaller than a buteo and had the long lines of an accipiter. But hawk plumage varies, making IDs hard. This one was dark and light. Maybe spots, maybe streaks. Too fast to tell. Didn’t matter anyway.

What mattered was its white rump, its insignia.

It was a Northern Harrier. No doubt about it. But why did I want to call it a Marsh Hawk? Maybe it’s because, until 1982, that’s what this hawk was called. Marsh Hawk. The name I’d learned a long time ago.

But griping about name changing has been done and overdone; let’s not do it. It’s old. Just like the bird books you had as a kid. Marsh Hawks are now Northern Harriers. The change is based on ornithological reasons determined by ornithologists. Case closed.

But first…

There’s a guy in Florida who pointed out that his tropical Marsh Hawks are now called Northern Harriers. Northern?

And the word “harry” is frankly a bit archaic. Exactly the kind of thing that makes some bird names sound dweeby. In fairness, it means to continuously attack. That’s a hawk thing, I guess. Overworked people say they’re harried. The name is sort of reasonable.

But still, people just don’t say “harrier.” It sounds like “hairier.” As in: “Bob, your girlfriend’s face is hairier than yours.” I guess you could call the hawk a “northern hurryer;” that would make sense. These hawks are usually in a hurry when you see them.

But no, they’re Northern Harriers. Even in southern Florida. The old name, Marsh Hawk, is retired. No matter that it described a hawk often found near marshes. Okay, point made. And making it is pointless. Let’s just say this:

A hawk tore over the ground today, reminding me of a fighter plane, locked and loaded. It was drab but had a white marking on its lower back. So I knew exactly what it was called. And what it had been called. And it was good to see it.

The reading’s 102. I take the thermometer out of my mouth. Damn. Looks like the two-fisted birdwatcher’s not going into the snowy woods today.

Been wanting to see a Northern Shrike all winter. Wanted to report on something unusual. More than Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, Crows and freezing winter Robins.

But the only thing these two fists are going to be holding today is a mug of chicken soup. I raise the shade on the kitchen window, and settle in. Maybe the birds’ll come here if I can’t go to them.

The window pays off. Not big time, but small time. With a small sighting that can bring a smile to a guy when he’s sick. It was the small, terrifically named “Brown Creeper.” He was on the big tree outside the big kitchen window. He was brown and he was creeping.

Every time I looked he was there. Curved beak. Tireless routine. Upside down. Rightside up. Inching up, inching down. Bark-colored and blending in. If he didn’t move you wouldn’t see him.

The day’s freezing and the tree’s iron-hard. Tough to imagine the Creeper’s getting bugs or any stuff in the crevices. Maybe that’s why he’s working constantly. But he seems happy. Bright eyed and full of action.

The same tree reveals a Red-breasted Nuthatch which is not unusual but took my mind off feeling crappy. There were Cardinals from time to time, but you know all about them. They’re outside your kitchen window, too. I think there were waxwings in a faraway tree, but like I say, they were faraway so don’t count.

Later, my temperature creeped down toward normal. The chicken soup worked. Time and Tylenol worked. Doing nothing worked. But it’s not right to say “doing nothing.” There was a Brown Creeper. I watched it.

Somebody famous said, “I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.” Who said it? We’ll get to that in a minute.

But the guy’s right. The whole “early bird” thing is a piece of popular wisdom that needs questioning. They always tell you to get going early. The nature experts, the birding advisors, the birds themselves.

They want you to drag your lazy butt out at dawn. Or sooner. Wait too long and you lose. This might be true if you’re a bird. But, as the famous guy suggested, what if you’re a worm?

I’ve done it both ways—early and not. One spring migration I scored thirty-some early sightings in the cold forests north of Chicago. Then came home at noon and found two male Scarlet Tanagers outside my bedroom window.

They were in my neighbor’s tree, along with Blackburnian, Wilson’s and Black-and-White Warblers. I didn’t need binoculars. There was the call of a Northern Oriole, too. And I also heard what was probably a Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Okay, these are not exotic birds that would ruffle the life lists of two-fisted birdwatchers who hike the Andes and Amazon. But they make a point. Birds are where you find them. And when.

They’re in our forests at dawn, and they’re in our neighbor’s trees at noon. If you’re lucky. Which brings us back to the worm.

A worm that gets busy at dawn might be eaten by a bird using the same early-to-rise ethic. It works for the bird. Doesn’t for the worm. All a matter of perspective. Makes you question the folk wisdom about rising early. Always a good idea to question folk wisdom, and everything else.

The author of the early worm quotation was our only four-term president. A guy who had a world-wide depression to deal with and also a life-and-death challenge called World War Two. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

He knew about luck, good and bad. I guess he figured that it’s not always something you influence with an alarm clock. Sleep late; the birds will be out there. And so will the worms that didn’t get eaten.

There’s a lot of snow cover today. I’m walking on a ski trail, my breath visible in the cold. And I’m thinking about white camouflage. Snow Buntings use it. So do Norwegian ski commandos.

I didn’t see Snow Buntings. But looking for them reminded me of another white bird that I did see, although not here. It was far from here. There was no snow. But there were Norwegians.

We were in the hills above Oslo, at a museum that had a Viking ship. I told my wife and friends to go in without me. I was museumed-out, and wanted to sit in a nearby park.

I just wanted to take it easy, but I couldn’t help noticing birds. They might’ve been common to Scandinavians but they were a novelty to me. Crows with gray necks. And black robins. These robins are Blackbirds of course, the lawn bird of Europe. But they’re cousins of American Robins; they’re shaped like them, walk like them and pull worms like them.

I saw a Magpie. In the bushes there were House Sparrows, like ours, and maybe some tits that I wasn’t bothering to check out for a change. I wasn’t birding, just taking a break from tourism.

Then a wagging tail caught my eye. The bird that it belonged to was mostly white, but it was no Snow Bunting. It had gray on the back, and some black on its head and neck. It was long and skinny, like a Catbird. I hadn’t seen one like this before. The storehouse of bird arcana in my head popped out a name: “White Wagtail.”

I checked a field guide later. Yeah, a White Wagtail. Something new for me. This is a bird of Europe and Asia. There are rare White Wagtails in the USA, but their range is limited or accidental.

It was nice seeing a white bird without freezing. I liked that park in Oslo. I liked not being in a museum. I took some criticism for missing the cultural experience, but I get that a lot. I would have felt worse missing the wagtail.

Red-tailed Hawks must like roadsides. On the interstate through Wisconsin there’s one of these big birds on just about every mile marker. Predators need space. Maybe this one-mile stretch is what they worked out.

Even on Chicago expressways, Red-tails sit on light poles watching traffic move under them. Ask most drivers if they saw a hawk on their ride and they’ll say, huh?

But Red-tailed Hawks are common. Not just common; they’re everywhere. This added a bit of irony to a birding experience we had in Arizona…

We were riding off the map to look for birds we don’t normally see. The brochure advertised “Horseback Birding Tours.” Our guide was a nice guy and knew the trail, but didn’t really care about birds. So much for truth in advertising. In any case, birding usually involves the luck of the draw.

We did okay. I noticed Gambel’s Quail, Gila Woodpeckers, Rufous, Black-Chinned and Anna’s Hummingbirds, Steller’s Jays and Cactus Wrens (big for wrens). My wife saw a Roadrunner but I missed it. The Gila Woodpecker, an obvious relative of our Red-bellied, was new to me.

We rode through a shallow, fast-moving river and lowered the reins so our horses could see the slick stones on the river bed. The horses knew what they were doing, and stepped carefully.

After the crossing, we saw a large buteo fly heavily out of a tree. Our guide spoke: “Hawk,” he said with the proud smile of a guy who kept a promise.

It was a Red-tailed Hawk, like the ones in Wisconsin, Chicago and everywhere. We all liked seeing it. I’d have preferred one of the west’s Ferruginous Hawks. Still, the ride was good. I won’t forget the river crossing and the intelligence of horses.

But it made me wonder: Is a Red-Tailed Hawk that lives in wilderness any better off than those we see near cars? Do half-eaten burgers tossed on road-shoulders kick butt when compared to skinny jackrabbits? Does being near traffic make a hawk’s day less boring than it would be in quiet wilderness?

We don’t know, and the hawks aren’t telling. Like so many things, it probably just comes down to where you’re born. The luck of the draw.

This month, again, our two-fisted “Hidden Bird Contest” has sparked interest from people who like to hunt. Not with guns, or cameras even, but with clicks.

Somewhere on this website, there’s a hidden American Kestrel, and if you haven’t already heard about it, you can read the details on our Hidden Bird Contest page.

We’re mentioning it here and now because around the end of the month—in a few days—we’ll collect all the names of people who found the Kestrel, put them in a hat and pick one. That person will get a Two-Fisted Birdwatcher hooded sweatshirt. These shirts are becoming status symbols among the cool people. Or so we hear.

But, it’s not about winning a prize. It’s about the fun of searching. It’s sort of like going into the woods or fields with sharp eyes. And you can do it right from your keyboard.

Okay. Just wanted to give you a heads-up about the timing for this month’s contest. Good luck.

A friend sent us an article from the blog “Boing Boing” about a chimp raised like a kid in a human family. Life was good for a while, but when the chimp grew up he was shot. Bummer.

Then somebody said, “Ah, he was just a dumb animal.” That phrase “dumb animal” pisses me off. It pisses off my dog, too. The whole idea of animal intelligence brought back an experience I’d had on Nantucket…

I was taking a break from a boondoggle business conference. Guys in ties huddled at the hotel while I sat alone on a sea wall, away from business bull. Suddenly I heard sharp reports hitting the rocks. Crack. Crack! Was my boss throwing stones at me?

No, it was Herring Gulls. They were picking shellfish from the surf, then flying straight up and dropping them on the rocks where I sat, and also on a nearby parking lot. Then the birds would swoop down and pry open shells cracked by the fall. This is tool-making, I thought. Gravity can be a tool.

(I learned that the noise from this regular activity was so annoying that residents tried putting fake gulls on the pavement so real ones would avoid bombing the spot, not wanting their meal stolen. This stopped working because the gulls caught on.)

We’ve all heard that crows have been known to get water out of a shallow bowl by putting pebbles in until the level rises. I’ve seen a Black-billed Magpie beg for food in Colorado by using eerily human-sounding language. Yeah, language. For more about the surprising smartness of Corvids, see “Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies and Jays” by Candace Savage. Or read the “The Mind of the Raven,” by Bernd Heinrich.

We don’t know how animals think. Or if they’re smart or dumb. Like people, they’re probably a little of both. All we can do is infer. My dog’s looking at me now, and is either thinking “He’s hit the keyboard exactly 2,150 times and is due to stop,” or maybe, “Treat, treat, duh, treat, pant, pant.”

Don’t know. But the Herring Gulls who dropped clams to crack them open didn’t seem dumb. And the chimp who got too big to handle around the house didn’t deserve to get shot. Anyone who uses the term “dumb animal” is talking about himself.

These sightings are usually about birds we’ve seen. But sometimes a sighting can be about a comment we get. And comments have been on the increase. Here’s one example:

(From a guy who read our Two-Fisted Library page….)

“Thanks. I’m always glad for suggestions on bird-related reading. Although you have not listed it, David Quammen’s Song of the Dodo is an amazing read. You are right to warn readers about the recent film version of King Solomon’s Mines, but the 1950 version with Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger is as two-fisted as they come…”

This visitor knows movies. And Quammen’s Dodo book is definitely worth checking out. My wife, reading this over my shoulder adds, “Don’t forget the Quammen book about Darwin, too.” (She means “The Reluctant Mr. Darwin,” which had been discussed in her book club).

When two-fisted bird watchers aren’t tramping around the wilds, they like books and films. And they have pretty good opinions. Being observant about nature goes along with being observant, period.

We appreciated hearing from the guy whose email is excerpted above. The web works best when it’s a conversation between all of us. So think of Two-Fisted Birdwatcher as a two-way street. Your comments are welcome. Whatever you’re thinking, it might make a “daily sighting.” Send it in. Not just for us, but for everyone.

A buddy and I were hiking deep in the North Woods near the Porcupine Mountains. These mountains are well named. A ranger at the trailhead warned us that porcupines could get under our truck’s hood and eat the engine hoses.

I had a camera for birds. My friend was just interested in hiking. I saw Pileateds (common there) and a Ruffed Grouse that walked fast, thumping his wings.

I saw a Northern Shrike and wanted to follow it. We were a few miles into the woods when a guy came from behind a tree with a slingshot. The kind that wraps the forearm. He had it cocked with a metal ball ready. He asked us what we were doing.

I told him we were looking for birds and bears and anything else we could photograph. He said, “Why would you do that?” with a toothless grin. He said hunters like us had shot his dog. He said we came from Detroit and might shoot people’s dogs.

We weren’t from Detroit. We weren’t hunters. We had no guns. We liked dogs. But the conversation was over. Then my pal said something about how cool the slingshot was. He’d seen that kind and knew the model. He asked smart questions about it and talked fast. They bonded.

Another dude, someone we hadn’t seen before, came out from behind a tree carrying a rifle and stood with the slingshot guy. My friend who had no interest in birds had the gift of gab. He talked some stuff to these guys, and they laughed together while I watched.

When they left my friend whispered: “Go.” And we walked out. Later he said we’d been in the cross hairs for a while, but he worked things out. Birds seemed less important then. But later I saw Bald Eagles on a nest and three kinds of herons, Black-Crowned Night, Little Blue and Great Blue as well as Mergansers and bear sign. I forgot the two guys. For a while.

I’m grateful to my friend. He’s gone now, having died in a car accident not long after that. He wasn’t a bird watcher, but he could talk some two-fisted talk. It was good to have him there, that day in the North Woods.

It’s deep winter, and nighttime birding is good. Leafless trees reveal owls against the sky. Snow cover lights up the woods, especially when there’s a moon.

While walking with my dog and looking in the treeline for owls I thought of a warm night last summer when I tried something completely different.

I rowed to the center of a small lake, dropped anchor, lay back on a canvas pack, and looked up. I was hoping to see owls fly over. Meanwhile, stars made a great show. There were coyote yips in the woods. It felt good to float.

I didn’t hear bird sounds, of course, and wondered why we don’t have Nightingales here. In Europe and Asia these birds are said to sing at night. Starlings were brought to America in the 1890s by some guy who wanted us to have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare. Wonder why he didn’t bring Nightingales. Maybe Shakespeare never wrote about them, but that seems unlikely.

While thinking about this, something passed over me, very low, blocking starlight. An owl? Then another. And another. The feel of a swarm. Not owls. Too big to be insects. Flapping black wings, utterly silent. Zip. Over my face, and gone. Bats.

I figured it was time to leave. I rowed, thinking: I’m not afraid, but let’s move it. Bats can carry rabies. I rowed well. That was my one time out on the lake at night, lying flat in a boat. It had been nice while it lasted, owl-watching until bats came.

I thought of that as I walked in the freezing January night, looking for owls against the sky. I have nothing against bats. But I liked that they were hibernating somewhere, and that there were no bugs either, and that I could see my breath in the cold, and my dog’s breath.

If there were owls in the trees we’d probably spot them, I figured. And we did. We saw three. Two were Great Horned with ear-like tufts and hawk-shaped bodies. And there was a pale one that flew off with wide flat wings and no noise. A Barn Owl, probably. It’s deep winter and nighttime birding is good.

I’m freezing my butt off. The forest is attracting more skiers than birders. But I’m looking. I’m drawn deeper into the snowy woods by a bird call.

I’m not good on bird sounds. This is a whirring. I figure a chickadee or nuthatch. I see a Red-breasted Nuthatch, although I’m not sure he made the sound. But I’m satisfied. Compared to the White-breasted this bird’s less usual.

And I see too many American Robins for this time of year. I think of them as Snow Robins and figure they don’t migrate because winters aren’t so bad any more. They’re no longer the first sign of spring.

My theory is probably bunk. This was pointed out by a birder who said these Robins came from the north to winter here, while ours went south. We’re probably both right and wrong.

As I was walking through the snow, freezing, I thought: how come we never see frozen birds? Seems like a bird would just drop from the cold, old age, anything, and we’d see it on the snow.

I recalled that the only frozen bird I ever saw was a Scarlet Tanager in June. I used to know an artist who painted good pictures of birds. He was excited to find a dead tanager in the woods. It was deep red and black. The artist wanted it as a subject so he kept it in his freezer. It would keep forever. A stiff tanager in a baggie.

I thought of this as I hiked, stiff with cold myself. I wondered what happens to birds when they die. Even in summer we rarely see their bodies. Whatever happens, I’m against keeping them in freezers, even if a good artist immortalizes them. I just don’t like the idea of a tanager staring out from behind the ice cream.

It’s a tough lesson to learn that there’s always somebody better at something than you are.

In college, you’re the best wrestler in your weight class and then a guy who’s built like pit bull throws you down so hard your kneecap breaks. The guy was a clear warning against smugness in any field.

I figure I know a little about birds. I always had a good memory for their names, locales and habits. The other day when a friend told me that he and his wife were heading from Chicago to Florida for a beach vacation, I suggested he amuse himself there by birdwatching, an activity he’s not particularly interested in.

With sincere if dimwitted excitement I told him he’d see Willets, Sanderlings and maybe my favorite Ruddy Turnstones on the beach, and Brown Pelicans over the sea as well as Frigate Birds or Man O’Wars, and he looked askance.

I realized I was speaking what is essentially a foreign language although I hadn’t meant to be a wiseass. I apologize to my friend, here and now. Although he does the same kind of thing by speaking Spanish to strangers in restaurants because he’s fluent in it, having spent some good years in El Paso.

All that aside, as much of a bird guru as I might seem to my bilingual pal, I’m a lightweight compared to the birders I’ve discovered on websites like IBET and Illinois Birders’ Forum. They’re better than I am. They know more, go more places, see more and report meaningful stuff. They’re the pit bull wrestler who made mincemeat out of me. It’s humbling.

But it doesn’t change anything. I learned long ago that whatever you do, somebody does it better. I don’t mind. I check these websites and enjoy vicarious kicks when I read about the Purple Sandpipers, European Goldfinches and Whooping Cranes (with photos to prove it) that they pull out of a deep hat. Meanwhile, I do the best birding in my weight class. And I write about it.