I should have left my over-confidence back in Chicago. But I took it with me into the high Rockies.

I figured I’d know the birds there. Wouldn’t need a field guide. Not even binoculars, although I picked up a cheap pair before heading into the mountains.

I’m sitting on rocks jutting through an opening in the forest about 9,000 feet up. The snow-capped continental divide is in the distance.

The sun is strong, and so is the smell of pine.

I’m all eyes for the birds, as usual, but I’d have liked to see a mountain lion or black bear. Signs posted on the trail said to watch for them.

I did see Ravens, a Western Tanager and a Red-naped Sapsucker. Then I saw…what the hell were they? Towhees?

No. But they were towhee-like. Similar shape, and they liked being on the ground. Still, I knew they weren’t towhees.

Gray, with a patch of rusty red on their upper backs, ending just below their heads. Cool-looking birds, landing and taking off in small flocks.

You probably know what they were. But I had to search out an old bird book in a ranger’s cabin down the trail.

They were a regional variation of the Dark-eyed Junco, a complex group of birds with several subspecies.

This Colorado subspecies is called the “Gray-headed Junco.”

The illustration nailed it. And the text said that these juncos are found in the high pine forests of the Rockies.

That’s where I was. That’s where they were.

There was that cool click you feel when information in a book matches information in the real world.

Smartass pals of mine might be tempted to say: hey, two kinds of gray-headed birds on the same mountain.

In spite of what lying cameras say, the description only works for the juncos. At least, that’s the way I see it.

It’s a sunny day in mid-summer. Sure it’s hot. It’s a sunny day in mid-summer.

Then I heard the news: Temp, 104, heat index, 130…Rolling blackouts in Detroit, Chicago summer-school kids sweltering, thousands of turkeys dying in Minnesota…fistfights in steaming New York subways…

Watch out. We’re in the hot seat.

I drove to a weedy drainage ditch where you can get into wilderness without much walking. Saw Blue-winged Teals. A skinny Common Egret. And a Black-crowned Night Heron, fishing.

These birds were doing what they’d do on any day, and looked happy. But they’re in water.

I moved to a dry, wooded area. A Phoebe was there, doing his job as usual. He flew out to grab a bug. Then headed back, repeating as needed.

Birds were acting pretty normal. Could it be because they don’t see the news? Nobody tells them about a heat index, or about killer humidity.

Had a thought: If you didn’t know how hot it was, how hot would it be?

While visiting a recent Cubs game, Hall-of-Famer Ernie Banks told an interviewer, “If you didn’t know how old you were, how old would you be?”

Mr. Cub…Always Mr. Positive. You can simply turn his observation about age into one about weather.

The birds never got the news. For them, it’s just another sunny day in mid-summer. And I wondered: Are news reports—horrific as they may truly be—making us all into a bunch of weather sissies?

I also wondered how I would’ve acted today if I heard no news, saw no thermometer. I might’ve gone about my business, no sweat. Well, maybe some sweat.

Noticed a Cardinal as I got near home. It looked hot, but that was probably because of its redness in the sun. I don’t think the Cardinal worried about weather reports, or anything we worried about.

Might be cool to live news-free.

Two-fisted bird watching was born out of a sensible compromise. Fierce beasts aren’t found around here, so you take what you can get.

You’d prefer a jungle where there are lions, panthers, rhinos, cobras, bone-crushing gorillas, all the dangers you grew up watching in jungle movies, or reading about in Kipling.

“You like Kipling?” I asked a girl on a first date. “I never kippled,” she said. First & last date.

You could go to Yellowstone where grizzlies walk, and that would be fun.

Not around here.

Or you could be like the late Hemingway in Africa, with a big gun, and shoot at lions in an over-compensating, bullshit craving for manliness.

Hemingway’s .577-caliber Nitro Express rifle should’ve been in his novels, not in his hands.

If you were a kid exploring prairies in the shadow of Chicago’s steel mills, you didn’t get to see lions. Your beasts were birds.

I saw Purple Gallinules and Ring-necked Pheasants. Three kinds of herons. Yellow-billed Cuckoos and every kind of migrating wood warbler, although screw their picky little names.

Around here.

I saw Red-tailed Hawks. And Barn Owls flying quietly through our nighttime alleys. I saw two kinds of unbelievable tanagers, Scarlet and Summer.

Turkey Vultures, too. Our steel mills and garbage dumps drew these vultures. The dumps for obvious reasons. The steel mills for the promise of early death in the air we all breathed.

Avian beasts weren’t jungle monsters, but they were available. A Blue Jay with white-tipped feathers said: wild! It wasn’t part of the engineered world of humans and their crap.

If I ever go to Africa, I’ll try to watch hyenas, cheetahs, gnus and tsetse flies, maybe a spitting cobra. I won’t care about birds, there, unless I see a Honey Guide, the coolest bird in Africa.

Meanwhile, I’ll stick with our available beasts.

Saw a show on Smithsonian channel about the Goshawk. This bird has a name you might misread. But it’s got a stare nobody can misread. It says: “You’re gonna get your ass kicked.”

A sharp stare is a clear prelude to aggression. You don’t have to be a bird to know this.

And you don’t have to come from a tough neighborhood, either. When somebody, anywhere, zeroes in, eyeball to eyeball, you get ready for fight or flight.

Penetrating stares, fights and flights are a big part of this Smithsonian documentary. It’s called, “Goshawk: Soul of the Wind.”

Stop saying “Gosh Hawk.” There’s no “sh” sound in this word.

More about that in a moment. But first, back to the bird’s stare. All raptors have heavy-browed, angry eyes that bore into you. But a Goshawk’s are especially memorable.

They express the naked aggression you see in the eyes of those looking for trouble in taverns, or in territories patrolled by fighter jets.

Goshawks in the documentary were shown weaving through the woods at blistering speed, like Luke Skywalker on one of those speeder bike rockets in “Return of the Jedi.

Wait a second: You know, maybe this bird’s name should be changed to “Skywalker.” Just a thought.

The U.S. Navy has a jet called the T-45 Goshawk. But the bird itself is a much more maneuverable machine. A chase-you-down, rip-you-up machine.

We know what the Goshawk can do. What we might not know is how to pronounce its name. Not “gosh hawk,” as many people say.

It’s “goss….hawk.” This is derived from the Old English “gos,” meaning goose, and “hafoc,” meaning hawk.

“Goose Hawk.” Yeah, you can picture one of these guys getting a fat goose in its sights and locking on.

Maybe its name should change to Goose Hawk. Or, like I said earlier, Skywalker. Either would be an improvement over Goshawk.

See, you just said it wrong again, didn’t you?

In an Illinois field, I saw a Dickcissel. A pretty damn bland thing to say. Two thousand miles away, a guy was killed by a grizzly in Yellowstone. That, I saw on CNN.

Got me thinking about the whole predator-prey relationship. And the buzz you feel when you’re the prey.

As it happens, my wife and I had hiked through that same part of Yellowstone, near Wapiti Lake trail. We disregarded “bear alert” warnings posted in red letters on trees.

I’d brought an air horn on the advice of those who said grizzlies wouldn’t attack if they hear you coming. Felt damn stupid tooting that horn.

But we felt the buzz. I wondered if you always feel it when you know you’re not on top of the food chain.

Once, while wading through tall prairie grass around here I stepped on a Red-tailed Hawk that was killing a pheasant. I didn’t see them until they flushed, flapping wildly in my face, then going their separate ways. There was blood on the ground. Hell, I’d saved a pheasant’s life, and pissed off a hawk.

I wondered if pheasants and other prey spend their lives feeling the buzz, knowing there could be a predator dropping in at any time.

In high school, I went to my car after a ball game, and a big kid was sitting on the hood.  Without looking, I said “Off.” Then I saw who the guy was.

He had a reputation; top of our South Chicago food chain. Police record, switchblades. He was a tattooed, scar-faced badass, older and twice my size.

I got the buzz then, and always remembered it. But the guy said, “Okay, okay…” and left. No problem.

I thought about all this while staring through binoculars at a drab Dickcissel. Screw the Dickcissel and his stupid name. My thoughts weren’t on that bird.

They were on Yellowstone, the buzz, and a line from an old movie called “The Big Lebowski.” It goes: “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.”

I never see nothin’ when I go to the woods.

Bad English? A double negative? Not so fast. It’s not the ignorant rant of an ignorant dropout.

It’s the ignorant rant of a guy who means what he says. I’ll explain in a moment.

On this dead quiet, hot & muggy day in the middle of a July 4th weekend, I went to the woods at noon, a stupid move.

I thought, maybe I’d spot a tanager in the trees. A meadowlark in the fields. A Cooper’s Hawk watching from a branch. Cormorants at the river.

But I felt the vibe as soon as I drove in: there’d be nothing. Mid-summer, mid-day, mid-nineties; it wasn’t smart to expect much.

Wildlife was off the clock. No birds to hear or see. No deer, fox, skunk, raccoon, coyote. No wind moved the trees or weeds. The place was like a still photograph.

I thought: sure, the freakin’ holiday weekend. What d’you expect? Even nature’s outa town.

I hiked anyway, sweating in the airless heat. There was nothing to see. But, as I said earlier, I didn’t see it. Nothing, that is.

As I walked, a big spider moved across the trail in front of me. It’s not a Pileated Woodpecker. But it’s not nothing.

I bent to take a good look. Interesting. If I’d seen one like that in my bedroom, I’d have had to remove it or never get to sleep.

Might’ve been a female Black Widow. Had a round abdomen with a fleck of red.

I watched it move safely off the trail and disappear into a woodpile. I was glad for the company.

And it proved that when you go into the woods, even on the dullest of days, you never see nothing.

I’d rather get bit by a cougar than a tick. With a cougar, you don’t have to wait to find out you’ve been attacked.

This morning I saw an Eastern Bluebird fly into a part of the woods I don’t normally enter.

But, it might not have been an Eastern Bluebird. I only got a quick glance. Its throat looked blue, which meant it could’ve been a Western Bluebird. Or something else.

I followed it, using a trail that’s little used. Knee-high grass was unavoidable. Further in, things got muddy.

Sometimes, you find yourself in an unvisited part of the woods, and it has a different quality of quietness. You feel that even animals and birds don’t come to this spot.

The deer and coyotes you’ve seen are in the usual places, near trails and open areas.

Birds, too, are back there, on the territory you know. Kingbirds, Summer Tanagers (sometimes), Indigo Buntings, cowbirds, several kinds of prairie sparrows; circling hawks and vultures.

But in this back-alley jungle, it was dead. No birds, no animals. Just high grass, heat and stillness. No mysterious blue bird, either.

When I returned to the main trail, I found a tick on my jeans, and brushed it away. I wondered about the ones I didn’t find.

Hate ticks.

A friend recently wrote in an email that “the ticks on the clock are getting faster and louder.” He meant time’s flying, and we better do something with our lives already.

His word “tick” comes back to me now. I picture the guy’s watch covered with ticks, the kind I found on the trail today.

Hate ticks. But, they’re a part of our clocks, and our woods. You have to live with ticks, both kinds. I’d rather have cougars.

Although, if you were pounced on by a cougar and you were holding his snapping jaw inches from your face, your fists filled with folds of his fur…know what you’d see?

Ticks. In his ears, around his eyes, crawling over your fingers.

I’m in Illinois but it feels like the Amazon.

I’m deep in the woods on a trail that’s not marked. There have been times when I didn’t like unmarked trails. You can get lost on them. But that won’t happen here; I know these woods.

Bird activity is modest. Mid-summer came in early summer, and the place is quiet.

I come to a fork in the trail. I stop. Stopping is good. When I blend into the stillness I see birds.

Swainson’s Thrush. A Catbird. A Red-eyed Vireo. A Great-crested Flycatcher, although its crest isn’t great and it’s not catching flies.

There’s a raccoon hole in a tree, high up. Young raccoons are peeking out. Better there than in my attic.

Mosquitoes have figured out that I’m not moving, and have come in to bite. Gotta get going. But which way?

Do I want to head down toward the river where there will be beaver sign and maybe a beaver to see?

Or, do I want the trail that runs along a pasture where I’ll see grouse and maybe a coyote who will look back over his shoulder, as he’s done before when I’ve seen him in the pasture.

This coyote’s steady gaze said, “Screw you, two-legs, and get out of here unless you’re going to lie down and become edible.” The eyes of a coyote speak eloquently.

Speaking of eloquent speaking, this decision about which trail to choose reminds me of a poem, “The road not taken,” by Robert Frost.

It was an easy metaphor about Frost’s decision to live a life of art. At the moment, I don’t care about his life of art, or his poem. There’s only so much room for poetry on a website called “two-fisted.”

I pick the path that’ll take me toward the river. It’s a good day to see beaver dams, and some colorful Wood Ducks. I don’t care if they’re not there. I’ve seen them before.

What I care about is walking this trail in the Illinois Amazon, being part of the green quiet, and making decisions that can’t be right or wrong.

Saw a Sora.

That’s not a tongue twister. It’s a bird. Sora. A kind of rail, a small swamp bird.

Soras aren’t rare. Still, people don’t see them much. I call them medium rare, like a good steak.

This gets me thinking about rareness. And, by contrast, the ordinary birds I notice.

Tree Swallows, Eastern Bluebirds, Indigo Buntings, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Northern Orioles, Scarlet Tanagers, Cardinals and Blue Jays.

Friends in the serious birding world are yawning.

They’re out with scopes, going after Dunlins, Kittiwakes, Purple Sandpipers, Anhingas; lost or adventurous birds that are really rare.

I rarely do that.

Have I become lazy? Is that the two-fisted way? Hell, the two-fisted way is any way you want.

You tramp around in the wild, and mainly don’t play into a stereotype. (See “Ain’t me” on North American Birding).

Sometimes, you spot rare birds. I saw a Smooth-billed Ani on gray pebbles in the Bahamas. A beak to remember.

I saw a Kiskadee in Bermuda. Guillemots in Alaska. Brazilian Cardinals and Indian Mynas in Hawaii.

Okay, anybody can see exotic birds in faraway places. But I saw the Sora near Chicago.

In the same suburban forest, I saw two other medium rare birds on different days: an American Woodcock and a Summer Tanager.

My hikes in these local wilds aren’t rare, themselves. So I usually see the usual cast of characters.

The Tree Swallows, Eastern Bluebirds and others I mentioned at the top. I also see vultures, kestrels, kingbirds, goldfinches, orioles…

These birds don’t blow up your skirts, as they say in the ad business.

But I keep wandering in the same buggy, muddy, wild-smelling timeless old woods and fields, and I’m fine with them.

Sometimes I see a Sora. And I think: Hey, medium rare.

I grew up in a big city where the only wildlife we had were pigeons, rats, and kids who broke windows with rocks.

On the way to school when I was eight, I saw a Cardinal and followed it. I went through alleys. I climbed fences. Lost track of time. Lost sight of the bird.

I was tardy getting to school. That’s a weird word, tardy. The only place you hear it is in a school.

But I knew why I followed the Cardinal, and felt no apology was necessary. To teachers or anybody.

It was wild. The closest thing in the city to a wild animal. If it had been a lion, I’d have been happier. But I took what I could find.

Now, after a lifetime of noticing birds and chasing them around, I realize that the city and suburbs are full of these wild animals.

Recently, on the way to work, I noticed a deer carcass at the side of the expressway. It had exposed ribs with shreds of meat on them, and there was the bumpy spinal column.

I figured coyotes, foxes, crows; all kinds of opportunists had been at work on this car-killed deer. It’s good to know there are animals in the night that make a living off such things.

As I drove further, I saw a Turkey Vulture down on the roadside grass before the next exit. It might’ve been resting there, its belly full of venison.

Aw, hell. I swerved onto the exit ramp.

I had to get to a meeting downtown, something about making TV commercials, something pretty important. But screw it. I wanted to see this vulture up close.

When I circled back to the spot where I’d seen it, nothing. The big old vulture must have spread those big old wings and took off.

But it had been there. It made the city and suburbs a better place, less humanized. A little more like a jungle movie, my favorite kind.

Okay, no vulture. I headed back. But, a U-turn wasn’t possible, so I was forced to drive miles out of my way.

I realized, when I finally got on course and was speeding toward the city skyline, that I was going to be late for my meeting.

I thought, hey I’m going to be tardy. Screw ‘em. Nobody uses that word any more.

*     *     *

I got interested in birds because, like every primitive human since cave days, I saw them flying and wanted to do that myself.

After a while, I knew one kind from another. I went to the woods, rivers, fields and beaches. Looking up.

It was a great way to get away from the mess that is the human world. Hiking, wilderness walking, bird watching, animal watching, all that, became a habit.

If it involved mud, strenuous exercise, and the kind of two-fisted adventure that made me read books about Henry Morton Stanley, well…cool.

Recently, there was a story in the news about a dog from North Smithfield, Alabama who had a two-fisted adventure. It involved flying.

This dog, Mason, was picked up by a tornado that destroyed the family home, and he was carried away.

If I’d been bird watching in a nearby county, maybe looking for an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, I might’ve seen this dog fly overhead.

Yeah, if I was looking for an extinct woodpecker, or following a common Turkey Vulture, I might have seen Mason in the sky.

He crash-landed somewhere. Might have been a hundred miles away, and limped home.

Weeks later, when his owners returned to sift through the rubble, they found Mason sitting on what was left of their porch.

Starving, and with two badly broken legs, he smiled up at them and feebly wagged his tail. Vets used screws and braces in a 3-hour operation. Now, Mason’s walking again.

That’s a two fisted dog. A dog that flew. A dog to remember.

Another dog to remember is the spunky little guy named Dante, my next-door neighbor until recently. We don’t have a picture of Mason, but we do have Dante. He’s the one on the right.

Like the kids’ movie title says, “All dogs go to heaven.” But some come back.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep bird watching.

Trick question: how far can you walk into the woods?

Around here, in early June, the woods feel like August. Hot, humid, quiet. I’m walking in a loop through a wilderness of old forest and fields with a river running through it. My path curves.

Hey, there’s a Swainson’s Thrush. It doesn’t fly.

By picking trails that loop around and back, I’m always moving forward. A different way to hike, I guess, would be to walk for a while, then do an about-face, and return. Yeah…but I don’t like U-turns.

There’s a Hairy Woodpecker. Too big to be a Downy. Too still to be normal. But in this heat, birds are just sitting.

Thinking about the word “loop” reminds me of the Chicago Loop. This is also a stamping ground of mine. It’s the cluster of skyscrapers circled by a loop of train tracks. Big, tall, tough, two-fisted Chicago.

Hey, an Eastern Bluebird in a clearing. A Tree Swallow on a reed.

I’m not going to see a Scissors-tailed Flycatcher today. Or a Purple Gallinule down by the river. Such improbable sightings are occasionally reported on birders’ forums.

If I ever see something that rare in here, I’ll stop thinking about loops, and report the sighting right away.

Meanwhile, I look behind me to see if I’m alone on this quiet trail.

In the Chicago Loop, a guy I know was walking to the train one night and didn’t look behind him. He felt a gun barrel on the back of his neck. He heard, “Don’t turn around. Gimme your watch and wallet.”

My friend walked away without these things. His back crawled, he said, expecting a bullet. Nothing happened. Except he had a good story.

In the woods there are coyotes and maybe cougars. Plus, the possibility of dangerous humans. Screw ‘em. Just makes the place more interesting to walk through.

That’s what I did this morning. I walked through the woods. I saw some hot, quiet birds, and thought about the word “loop.”

After a while, I walked out. Which brings up the trick question. Whether you backtrack, or loop around the way I did, you can only walk INTO the woods half way.

The mystery about my dog and the big dog has been solved.

Took a good crack of thunder to do it. A crack of thunder that shook my house. My old Springer Spaniel wouldn’t have liked the sound of it.

I’m not in the woods during this storm. Not that weather fazes me much.

I’ve gone hiking, bird watching, animal watching, river watching, all those things, in all kinds of weather. But not in thunderstorms.

In hundred and ten-degree heat I followed Gambel’s Quails through an Arizona desert.

When the temperature was below zero I saw a flock of Snow Buntings on a frozen field in Michigan.

I watched an Orchard Oriole during steady rain in a suburban Chicago forest.

Nothing was much cooler than seeing Wild Turkeys drift out of dense fog in Wisconsin.

Weather’s part of the natural scene. I like all kinds. Even took college courses in it. I bore people about cold fronts.

All that aside, I stay inside when there’s thunder outside.

Which reminds me of my dog, and her mysterious behavior.

Whenever she’d hear thunder, she’d crawl under a table, a bed, our legs. She even locked herself in a bathroom.

But this was a brave dog. Once she took off after a herd of deer. We don’t know what she’d have done if she caught up with them.

She’d bark at horses and make them jump.

She wasn’t faint hearted. We always wondered, in the years of her long life, why she was freaked out by only one thing: thunder.

Today, when that sound shook our house, rattled my bones, I got the answer.

The sound outside started with a growl, then exploded into a big, really big, atmospheric bark. We know what it was, of course.

But if you’re a dog, what does it sound like to you?

The news that Bob Dylan is turning seventy got to me. The picture in my head is of a wild-haired, folk-rock rebel.

Now this guy who was once the voice of the seventies is going to be in his seventies.

A skinny Great Blue Heron is standing in a pond near my house. His plumage is messed by the wind. He looks beaten up by time.

I wonder how old this bird is. Herons can be over twenty.

One thought leads to another. The old heron reminds me of Bob Dylan. And about how time keeps moving people, herons and everything else into the future.

A song pops into my head. “Time…keeps on slippin’ slippin’ into the future…” This is not a Dylan song, although it’s from his era.

It’s from the Steve Miller Band, called “Fly like an Eagle.” It has an eagle in it, “…flyin’ to the sea.” Now I start thinking about eagles.

(This is nothing like reporting that I saw a southern regional wood warbler unexpectedly in the north. I like spotting rare birds. But there’s more to bird watching.)

Sometimes bird watching is just that: bird watching. Staring heron-like at a heron. Getting into the Zen of it. Letting your mind wander to eagles…

Best Bald Eagle I ever saw was in Michigan, flying low over a poor man’s lake. It looked like a poster for America.

I saw another eagle over a beach in Florida once. It might’ve been flying to the sea, like the eagle in Steve Miller’s song.

I guess I’d like eagles better if they didn’t look mad. I respect the way they fly, and their strength. But they’re always scowling.

Vultures fly strong, too, yet they keep an easy-going look on their ugly faces. One of my favorite old writers, Ed Abbey, wanted to come back as one.

Maybe he did. Yeah, Abbey’s dead. Dylan’s seventy.

And I’m standing like a fool watching an old heron. Meandering in my mind about eagles in my past. Time keeps on slippin’ into the future. So do we all.

Sometimes people ask why I slog around in the wilderness. I even ask myself.

Yesterday, on my way home I drove into a forest, parked at the trailhead and walked around.

Saw Eastern Kingbirds, a Brown-headed Cowbird, Eastern Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, nothing real newsworthy.

But they are the answer: I go to the wilderness because that’s where the birds are.

This reminded me of a quote attributed to bank robber Willie Sutton. When asked by a reporter, “Why do you rob banks?” Sutton is said to have replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

This became famous, and a standard by which we’re taught to look for the obvious. Some medical schools teach it as “Sutton’s law.”

Trouble is, he never said it.

The reporter made it up. One crook being misquoted by another crook. Yeah, a journalist who lies is a crook.

And speaking of crooks, back to the birds I saw yesterday…

One was a true crook. The Brown-headed Cowbird. Cowbirds are famous for being infamous, like Willie Sutton.

A cowbird will sneak into another bird’s unattended nest, lay an egg alongside the ones that belong. And take off.

It won’t do any hatching or feeding. It will enjoy the easy life of a crook.

The honest citizen who sits on the nest unknowingly feeds a fast-growing baby cowbird, along with the young birds that should be there.

This new cowbird muscles the others aside and steals most of the food. Sometimes it kicks the others out. They die.

The cowbird continues to grow, then starts a life elsewhere. It’ll mate, and lay an egg in the nest of another unsuspecting bird. The crooked lifestyle continues.

A reader of ours recently sent a picture she took, showing a Yellow-throated Warbler feeding its supposed baby, really a cowbird.

The “baby” is bigger than the mother. You nailed this crook, Cindy. Thanks for the picture.