After a long winter’s hike, you’re nursing a beer in your favorite restaurant bar. You’d been out all morning looking for a Snowy Owl, but didn’t see one.

You’re no stranger to this bar, or this beer. Both are old friends. But there’s something different today. The place feels nicer. Why is that?

You gotta think about it. But first, you gotta hit the men’s room.

There’s a big guy in there who got stuck watching his kid while his wife shops in the neighborhood. He’s changing the kid’s diaper on the sink.

The atmosphere’s worse than usual in the men’s room. Plus, you can’t get at the sink.

It’s a deciding moment.

You’re pissed off because you didn’t see the Snowy Owl that many people have been talking about on the internet. Now this.

You want to give the guy a dirty look in the mirror, and say something like “cheeez!” Then leave, and slam the door.

Something stops you. Instead, you say, “Ah, the joys of fatherhood.”

You smile at the guy as he struggles. He looks up and says, “Tell me about it.” And smiles back. Now you both feel good instead of bad.

Back at the bar, it hits you. Why the place feels nicer.

It’s the lights. This restaurant bar is lit up with little holiday lights. They’re strung across the ceiling, over the bottles, around doorways.

You hate to say it—it’s not a two-fisted comment—but they’re kind of pretty. They give the place a…glow

Normally, you don’t care about things in a bar being pretty. Except for tall, blond Donna who sometimes sits with you.

No, you don’t care that they’re pretty. But you gotta wonder, why don’t they have these little lights all year ‘round?

~

This post was first published twelve years ago, and it seems worth posting again. It evokes a feeling that hasn’t changed much in a world that has. Enjoy the season.

Say you spend your childhood playing in smoky industrial prairies and wetlands at Chicago’s southeastern edges. How the hell are you going to become a birder. Or—better word—a birdwatcher. (Always had trouble with that popular word, “birder,” but we cover that gripe in another post long ago and not so far away).

How is a kid going to become a birdwatcher when nature is found beneath steel mill smokestacks, a mile from a paint refinery as the crow flies…and neighbors with a municipal dump. Yeah, crows do fly there. Don’t be surprised. Here’s something you might not expect. ALL the birds are there. The whole Chicago-area aviary.

The air doesn’t smell like pristine forest. Still, birds are where you find ‘em, where they have a mind to be, even where the pollution is. Goes against expectations. But birds have little interest in what we expect. Say you’re ten years old and exploring the prairie in the smog of a summer afternoon. You and friends were looking for snakes by lifting a flat rock or chunk of garbage, and pygmy rattlers would wriggle away while you’d jump and whoop, feeling like jungle explorers.

But then you see a Purple Gallinule. Time stops. This is not a backyard bird. It’s an ad for Jurassic Park. It gets you interested in birds. For life. You investigate, learn its name, its origin, its habits. Basically you like its brash coloration and knowing you know stuff about it. You become a two-fisted birdwatcher. Starting in the rank-smelling warm winds blowing across  prairies near factories. An unexpected origin for wildlife and a wild lifelong interest.

And…what’s a childish word like “belly” doing in the business of avian taxonomy? This gripe came to mind again while sighting a “Red-Bellied Woodpecker” today. If you mention its name to anybody all they hear is, “belly.” Ornithology screwed up. Or at least English naturalist Mark Catesby did in 1729 when he saddled this bird with its misguided name. Sorry, Mark, the bird’s belly is NOT RED.

People want to say, “Hey, look at that red-headed woodpecker!” But that name’s been taken by another species, and for good reason. No, today’s visitor is stuck with “Red-bellied.” A false and phony handle for this two-fisted bird with its jackhammer beak, black-and-white ladder-back pattern, tan chest, red top and neck.

We knew a guy who drove for Chicago’s Red-Top Cab Company years ago when cabs were not “private cars.” Maybe this woodpecker should be called “red topped.” Oh well, we’re just blowing off steam on a cold morning. But, c’mon, belly?

If I told you I was one happy Belted Kingfisher this morning, would you believe me? Of course not. Maybe you’d think Belted Kingfishers can’t talk. Maybe you’d think Belted Kingfishers can’t write. Maybe you’d think you’re not sure what a Belted Kingfisher is! Some kinda bird, right? Hold on. I’m a KING of birds. The king-fisher! I talk. I squawk. I write. Go with it.

This morning I was perched on a branch overlooking a wild little lake in an old Illinois forest. The sun was shining. The water was that bitchin’ greenish-gray you gotta love. The air smelled like weeds and fish. Great smells! Wait, fish? A great smell? Yeah! Delicious wild fish… mmmm!

And I dove off my branch, fast, (blink and you’d miss that move!) into the lake with a splash. And caught a fish! This is what I do, streaking point-first (my long sharp beak, the point of my story) and zooooming into the water where I speared a silvery fish that caught my eye. Then up and out. Wings working. Taking to the air. Head back, beak open, GULP, fish down the throat. Happy!

Ah, that cold, sleek, sweet, smooth, fleshy, bony, scaly, salty, pure food, a fish! But what really made me happy is that I was watched by a human half-hidden in the trees. Some guy with a shaggy head of hair, almost as wild as my Kingfisher crest! I’m happy to be seen doing my thing, hunting and splashing and fishing, flying and gobbling, looking sleek and cool while scoped out by the human.

Meanwhile, back at the branch…I’m sittin’ in the sun. Buuuuuuuurrrrrrp! Whoa, that was fishy. But almost as good comin’ up as goin’ down. Ah, does life in the wild get any better? Hope you’re still watchin’, shaggy head.

The migration ain’t what it used to be. But then, what is?

Well, let’s try to keep this on track at least for a bit. Migration. Yeah, today on a cold November morning north of Chicago there were geese in the sky. For a moment, it all seemed to make sense.

But then the geese didn’t keep on keep’n on in their southward vee-formation. They nose-dived into a McDonalds parking lot where they seemed to prefer waddling on cold pavement, pecking at hoped-for French fries, who knows?

What we DO know, is that many migratory birds that used to define the seasons are falling down on that job. Geese and some ducks, too, now commonly stay through our modern winters. Yeah, yeah, global warming, climate change, heard it all. We’ve written about it. Right here on this site.

Speaking about that, and about how things “ain’t being what they used to be,” new writing here is also a change in the action. We haven’t put a post on this website for more than eight years. But we’re planning to stop sitting on our hands, stop doing other things, stop the freakin’ “hiatus” and get back to two-fisted birdwatching. And two-fisting writing.

This post is the first of that comeback. Glad you’re reading it!

Stay with us, and we’ll pick up where we left off. You don’t have to have been here all those years ago as a reader. Just having you here today is great! We’re pleased to meet up with you. And hope we’ll connect again soon. Watch for updates on Facebook and Instagram. Things ain’t what they used to be, and we’re trying to catch up. Meanwhile, enjoy the those geese waddling through winter in a birdland that just ain’t what it used to be.

From spring through fall, an old dead tree near a highway has many cormorants in it. It’s been their hangout for generations. People drive by and think they’re seeing crows or maybe vultures. But they’re cormorants.

On this winter day, you drive past that spot and notice the tree’s no longer there. When things warm up and cormorants return, they’re going to look for it.

You continue down the road, away from the blank space where the cormorants’ tree used to be. The gap back there reminds you of a missing tooth.

When the cormorants come they’ll hover over it in confusion for a while. You feel a kind of philosophical shoulder-shrug sorrow for this inevitable truth.

Their world is going to be shaken. They’ll manage, of course. But the fact that such things happen to birds and man is disconcerting, like the ominous appearance of a cormorant itself.

If you’re around next spring, and if you drive past the tree that’s not there and you see that there are no cormorants, you’ll know that your life has been changed a little.

Yeah, your life. Sure, it’s the cormorants that have been affected. But they were your cormorants. And that old dead tree was your old dead tree. A part of your world that got a tooth knocked out.

 It’s raining like crazy over a woodland lake the way it does sometimes on an August day that starts sunny.

The sky darkens. Low clouds roll over and unload. The lake’s surface makes you think of machine-gun fire.

Thunderclaps encourage that idea, and lightning. Wind shakes trees. Leaves and branches fly off and spin around.

Somebody’s lawn chair blows into the lake.

Water comes down with sound and fury as Shakespeare said somewhere.

But unlike his sound and fury, this isn’t a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.

It’s a tale told by a warm front in disagreement with a cold front signifying nothing. Except the uncertainty of August sunshine.

Now a bird flies across the lake through the rain. It’s an American Robin but this bird’s name is not important.

What’s important is its improbable, implacable route. Flying straight through all that wind and rain, in spite of it all.

You wonder: where’s it going? What’s so important there? How can it maintain altitude when the weight of so much water is pushing down on its back? What’s it thinking?

You’ll never know. And it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that you feel an unexpected moment of admiration for a bird flying unfazed through a storm. This makes your day.

On May 26, 2012, we published a post titled “Unseen.” It said Northern Flickers hadn’t been noticed much around here recently.

Separately, people who saw a Flicker and weren’t sure what kind of bird it was, went online to search for a picture that could help them identify it. They found our post with its photo, and the bird’s name.

Many sent us a comment to let us know. Seems Flickers weren’t “unseen” everywhere.

It’s normal for a post to get a few comments, but “Unseen” generated an uncanny number. Close to a hundred at last count.

And they still come in. Some in response to that 2012 post, and some to the one you’re reading now.

Flickers are out there, even though experts have reported they’re declining.

Well, they’re not declining on this site. Here’s another picture.

Ray and Barbara from North Adams, Massachusetts were nice enough to send it.

Flickers may be scarce in our neck of the woods, but they’re still spotted.

Years ago, you’re in an office on the 26^th floor of a Chicago skyscraper, doing work profoundly unrelated to nature.

You have the feeling of being watched.

You look over your shoulder.

On the other side of your window there’s a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, clinging to the building, meeting your gaze.

The bird had picked your window. Not the window of some guy who wouldn’t know a sapsucker from his elbow.

You grab a cheap throw-away camera and get a picture.

The shot is poor. Dark and fuzzy. You find it recently, while cleaning out a desk.

Back when you saw the sapsucker, you had the momentary feeling that it sought you out, personally.

Looking at the old picture, you still wonder about that.

But you shake off the thought.

You just chalk it up to the simple truth that sometimes you watch the birds, and sometimes they watch you.

Sunday, early. Bushwhacking through woods and fields. You see the first waves of fall migrants. Warblers, thrushes, hawks in groups. It’s a whole new ball game as the season changes.

But you can’t stay.

You gotta get home to watch the Bears kickoff. During the game, a familiar idea comes to mind: Stereotype busting.

(It’s the reason behind this website. You know: birders are rugged, not stereotypical geeks. We’ve said this before.)

How did the Bears kick a stereotype right out of the stadium? Here’s how:

Today’s new coach is a thin guy in glasses, and they say he’s got a law degree. Not exactly the old-time image of “Da Bears.”

Never underestimate anybody.

He was a college quarterback, then a big-time winner in cold Canadian pro football. A stereotype buster.

You liked watching the birds change with the season as you slogged through the wilds in the morning. And later that day you liked seeing an intellect in glasses have his team kick ass.

The only bird in the quiet woods was a Great Crested Flycatcher. It’s not unusual, normally. But normal isn’t always normal any more.

You hadn’t seen one for a while and it triggered the thought of a Ferruginous Hawk. Why? It didn’t look anything like a hawk. But there was a link somewhere in your mind.

You think of a story written years ago, buried now in the “Stories” section of this website. “The Ferruginous Hawk.”

The link between this story and the sighting of a single flycatcher in an empty woodland is there, maybe—but you’d have to read the story again to know for sure.

And you could do that. Because of a link. You could click the last word in this post, and be taken there.

It’s just a piece of short fiction, written for the hell of it. But some stories get under your skin. They surprise you by coming to the surface when you don’t expect it.

Like when you see a lone Great Crested Flycatcher. A bird that’s no Ferruginous Hawk. But still, there’s a link.

Today, a neighbor said we’ve got beavers. No smartass reply welcome. The guy was serious. Some trees were gnawed, and might fall.

We live near water. Nice to sit at the end of the day and look at this water with trees reflected in it.

In one of the trees an American Bittern stares down at you. This wading bird should be in reeds, but it’s up a tree. Birds do what they want.

There are orioles and tanagers in these shoreline woods. Phoebes, too. They like to hunt over the water and return to a hanging branch. You see Belted Kingfishers sometimes.

And Red-winged Blackbirds very often. You might think these are so common they’re boring. But they never get boring. None of this stuff gets boring.

The neighbor said the powers that be in this community are thinking of hiring a beaver removal service. “Humane relocation” guaranteed. A claim that makes your BS detector go off.

But if more trees get chewed, it could come to that. Leave it to the beavers. Let’s hope they relocate on their own.

When you’re out in the deep woods, you might focus on a woodpecker, and discover there’s a porcupine on the next branch.

Or you look at vultures picking at something in a clearing, and notice that a coyote is looking back at you from the tree line.

It’s good to get out where the birds are. More than good. It’s wild.

While birding, you might see muskrat, beaver, mink, snapping turtles, alligators. You’ll come across deer, a sure thing.

Could be you’ll see snakes, moose, elk, fox, antelope, javelinas, armadillos, wild sheep, maybe a bear.

You might spot a Pine Marten, if you’re lucky.

Marten sounds like a bird’s name. When you talk about it later, people think you’re talking about a Purple Martin, something like that.

But it’s no bird. It’s a predatory mammal, all fur, teeth and claws. It hunts in trees, and is rarely seen.

“Pine Marten” is also the name of a fiction piece in our Stories section.

Well, we call it fiction. But, like everything mentioned here, it comes from real life.

Stereotype breaking took an audible twist today.

We already know that the whole point of this website is to break the stereotype that bird watchers are dweeby.

They’re wildlife explorers of all kinds and can’t be pigeon holed. This is made clear on our home page, and in the short essay about our name.

But back to the audible twist.

A guy you met today, no dweeb, says, “Damnit, I’m not seeing the birds I’m hearing!”

He chugs the rest of his beer, crushes the can like a paper cup, then goes on.

“I heard a Black-capped Chickadee, Cardinal, Northern Oriole, Hermit Thrush…”

And he names some others.

Then says, “I didn’t have binoculars, wasn’t near feeders, and the trees are too thick. All I could do was hear ‘em.”

It was a complaint. But you took it as a testament to this guy’s ears and his knowledge of birdcalls.

You think to yourself, hey, a new twist in stereotype breaking: the Two-Fisted Bird Listener.

A while back, you were in a Chicago bar. Through an alley window you saw a fairly uncommon Eastern Towhee.

There were some city weeds among the cracked pavement there. Still, you wouldn’t go in that alley to see birds. Maybe you’d go to see rats.

But when it comes to birds, you gotta expect the unexpected. Birds are found where you find them.

Same thing goes for finding two-fisted birdwatchers.

You know a guy, six-one, two-twenty, mostly muscle. Played starting center years ago in high school. He’s been known to scare bouncers in night clubs.

These days he’s into the wife and kids, pizza, workouts, real estate deals. Not exactly the old-school image of a birder.

(We don’t like the old-school image of birders. That’s what this website is all about).

Today you got an email from this guy with some excitement in it. He wrote: “Hey, just saw a Ruby-throated Hummingbird out my bedroom window!”

Little bird. Big guy. Is it surprising that he cared? Hell, no. Two-fisted birdwatchers, like birds themselves, are found where you find them.

Saturday April 27. Dateline: the couch. There’s a sprained back in the picture, but you’re too busy to care about it.

Because you’re doing two kinds of bird watching.

One: you’re looking out the window. There’s been floodwater out there recently, so you’re seeing an uncommon Caspian Tern circling. He’s lost or nuts. You’re not on the Caspian Sea.

Two: you’re watching a rare bird named Robinson make history in the Bulls playoff against the Nets.

This guy is a five-nine, one-man show in a world of giants. He’s turning the tide in a game that was going downhill. It takes Robinson and his two-fisted teammates three overtimes to win, but they do, with historic stats.

Nate Robinson proves that little is big. Impossible is possible. Man can fly.

But what about the Caspian Tern? You saw it through your window, a sighting appreciated in Illinois. But it wasn’t the rarest of the day. Not with Nate Robin…son making a kind of rare bird life-list this season.

Search Caspian Terns on the net for your birdwatching fix. Then search Nate Robinson’s game-four performance in the Bulls-Nets playoff game for your two-fisted fix.

Take your kids to Disney World over the years, and they change like time-lapse photography.

This place makes you notice time passing. You also notice birds. Including a favorite, which I’ll get to in a minute.

First, quick impressions: A Mockingbird on an umbrella table. A pair of Ospreys hunting over Bay Lake. They don’t care if the lake’s manmade. Its fish are real.

Anhingas and Double-crested Cormorants are on the shoreline. White Ibises walk among crowds. Long-legged tropical birds acting like pigeons. Goofy.

Black Vultures and Turkey Vultures watch. Maybe a goofy Ibis is dead. Or a feral pig rots in the palmettos. There’s a lot to eat at Disney World.

A Wild Turkey walks the golf course. Boat-tailed Grackles are common. American Coots float in Fantasy Land. A Bald Eagle circles above it all.

Then there’s an all-time favorite bird. He was around when you were a kid and still is. Things change, but not him.

Dave Brubeck died a few weeks ago. Saw this while working at my computer. Hell. Brubeck.

Well, the guy lives on in a jazzy, smoky, boozy, sexy, moody and rhythmic corner of your mind.

What’s the connection between Brubeck and going hiking? Why mention him on a birdwatching website?

There’s not much smoky, boozy, jazzy stuff happening in the woods.

At least Charlie Parker, also a jazz great, was named “Bird.” But wait.

When I heard Brubeck split the scene, I decided to take a break and walk in the wild for a while. I left work, left my computer with its news of the day, and got into the day.

Brubeck’s quartet made “Take Five” immortal. Even better, it was on an album called “Time Out.” These escapist titles send a clear message.

Maybe they’re the connection. Or maybe it just feels right to put a few words down about a guy whose wild talent will never stop being appreciated.

In any case, I took five.

 ~  ~  ~ 

A moody poet. Not a two-fisted subject.

Edgar Allan Poe

A hard-hitting NFL team—beer, blood, touchdowns, tailgating, cheerleaders. That’s a two-fisted subject.

There’s a connection. Just wait.

But, why would someone who’s interested in birds care?

Okay: A while back the Cleveland Browns left Cleveland, pissing off their fans, and moving to Baltimore.

The team got a new name.

It was inspired by a long-dead, long-haired poet. Edgar Allan Poe, a Baltimore boy. His famous poem is “The Raven.”

Baltimore named their team: The Ravens.

They’ve been fun to watch from the start. They even won a Super Bowl in January, 2001, defeating the Giants 34 to 7. And they’re off to a great start this season.

The Ravens are a ravenous, bone-crunching, smart and fast team. Two-fisted birdwatchers like it.

Poetry, football and birds. Three very different things, all meeting on the same playing field. What a kick.

Double-crested Cormorants look like danger. They ride low in the water, unlike other swimming birds.

You see one. Then it submerges, and you lose sight of it. Keep watching. It’ll surface somewhere else.

But, you won’t see much body; just a long, skinny neck.

Like a periscope.

Today, I watched a Double-crested Cormorant on a forest pond, diving for fish.

A fascinating, two-fisted hardass. It reminded me of a comic book cover from another generation.

I’ve written about these comics before.

Their name caught my eye for obvious reasons.

And speaking of names, this diving, hunting bird needs a better one.

Forget the double crests. They’re usually not visible.

And what does “cormorant” mean, anyway?

No, this bird should be called “The Submarine Bird.”