I’m in the woods. I figured that’s where the wildest birds are. But, then I see American Robins. A White-breasted Nuthatch. More Robins. Some Kinglets. Same birds I see in my backyard. Except one.

The Hermit Thrush.

This shy bird with the rusty tail, eye rings and speckled breast likes deep woods. He’s private. I only see him when I go far from human habitat. A hermit. His name fits.

Bob Grump would approve of this name. But he’d like to change a bunch of others. Grump’s a guy who wrote a guest essay here August 24, “Let’s Change Stupid Bird Names.” Grump’s own name is dubious, but his ideas are okay. And they’ve stirred people up.

We’ve received several Grump-inspired suggestions for re-naming certain birds. Some appeared in the “comments” section under his essay. But others have quietly accumulated around here in an unpublished file.

If we get a few more, maybe we could print all of them for everyone to see. Readers could shoot down the bad ideas, cheer on the good ones. Have some fun. Send your name ideas in, if you got ‘em.

I’ll start things off: I think the “American Robin” is a wrong name. It’s based on a mistake. English settlers thought this new-world thrush was a Robin because it looked like the small European Robins in the old country.

We should call our Robins something really American instead. How about the “Yank?” Think about it. Yank means American. Also, this bird is often seen yanking worms out your lawn.

A flock of Yanks. Yank’s-egg blue. Works for me.

But then, there could be a slang meaning for this word that’s kind of raunchy. Maybe it won’t fly. Although the woods are full of Titmice and Woodcocks. In any case, we don’t have to use it. It’s just a suggestion to get the ball rolling. To start the conversation.

If enough people send in name changes, we’ll set up a page for them. We could pick the best one and award a prize. Maybe call it the “Grump Challenge.” If Bob Grump doesn’t like it, he can lump it. But I think he’d be on board.

Now it’s up to you.

His body is changing. Happens to all guys. For us, it happens first in the teens, then later on, when age knocks hair off some places and adds it to others. Damned embarrassing.

But this guy’s not embarrassed. He’s not turning red. Just the opposite. He’s turning un-red.

This is something I don’t much like. A Scarlet Tanager owns a pretty cool color. Why mess with a good thing? But, every Fall, these males get mottled with light green, then as they head down to Central America they become light green all over.

Change. Part of the season. You see a molting Scarlet Tanager, and figure: another year.

Just today, I saw six hawks circling overhead. These predators usually hang out alone. But change is in the air; they’re traveling to a different place. Blackbirds are massing near highways. A Caspian Tern spent hours fishing in a local pond. Not exactly the Caspian Sea, or any sea, but the pond had food that a migrating bird needs.

Today’s molting Scarlet Tanager reminded me of a story I meant to write, but probably never will. It’s about a depressed old millionaire who finds an exhausted Scarlet Tanager among fallen leaves.

The bird’s panting, too weak to fly south. The guy scoops it up and phones the airport. He tells them to rev up his jet; they’re going on a trip.

Six hours later the bewildered tanager is released in Costa Rica. Back at his beachfront hotel, our millionaire meets a hot tamale of a babe. They have a torrid affair. In the mornings they eat breakfast in the sun, and the guy’s got fire in his eye. There’s a tanager singing nearby. Is it the one he brought south?

Can’t be sure, but we like to think so.

There’s one other change that we’re dealing with around here. Nothing about birds or story-telling; more of an administrative thing, so bail out right now if you’re not interested. But in case you are:

We changed our email notification system. Those of you who subscribe to Two-Fisted Birdwatcher by clicking “Receive Updates” used to get a brief excerpt announcing every new post.

But glitch happens in the tech world. And some people didn’t get the notices. So we changed to a new system. That explains why your notification about this post looked different. Will it work better? Can’t be sure, but we like to think so.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy the changing season.

Rob and Jonah are going camping. Rob’s a rugged and sinewy guy in his late thirties and Jonah’s a tall ten year old with a right arm that’ll get him a job pitching for the Cubs someday. Or maybe for a good team, we’ll see.

They asked me to give them some bird names to look for on their trip to the wilds. I don’t figure a ten year old really cares much for bird watching. But I came up with an idea he might like. Bird baseball.

It’s simple. Like any baseball game, it’s all about scoring. Here’s how it works. See a Chickadee and it’s worth a single. Man on first. Only problem is that “Chickadee” is a damn silly name. Unworthy of baseball. You don’t hear any city calling its team the Chickadees. The Cleveland Chickadees. No. No way.

Still, this little white, gray and black bird is easy to spot when you’re camping, and what you gotta see if you want a single. If it had a better name, maybe you’d get extra bases.

Okay, next, Cardinal or Blue Jay—either one, is worth a double. These are good baseball birds. Both have major league teams named after them. Both are unmistakable. The Cardinal’s all red; the Blue Jay’s mostly blue. And both have pointed crests on their heads.

To get a triple, see a Turkey vulture. Big, black, with wide wings and a wild dinosaur kind of look. Keep your eyes on the sky; these giant birds fly in circles up there. Score a vulture sighting and you’ve got a man on third. Plus, if you’ve seen one of those other birds, a triple drives them home.

To get a home run, find yourselves a Bald Eagle. This isn’t easy, but in America, anything’s possible, and this is America’s bird. The home run bird. You can score it if you’re good and if you’re lucky.

That’s it. Keep your eyes open. Divide the game into innings, have hot dogs, and see how many runs you can rack up on your trip. Watch out for bears while you’re in the woods. But they’re in another league, and a whole different ball game.

Good luck, guys.

Somewhere in an office. A guy has his computer open. On it there’s a screen saver: the famous, moody painting, “Nighthawks,” by Edward Hopper. It shows grim people at an all-night diner, and it’s a two-fisted painting.

What does this have to do with bird watching? Hold on. First of all, consider the two-fisted Hopper. He didn’t pull punches, showed things in a tough, hard light.

But bird watching comes to mind—obviously—because of the title of this, his best (my opinion), painting. It made me think about Nighthawks. Specifically the Common Nighthawks that I used to see in early Fall around here. They used to come in droves.

But I don’t see them these days. I think the world is getting better and worse at the same time. And this is one way it’s worse. Friends are out of work, and the sky is out of Common Nighthawks. What the hell?

These fast-flying birds with their long, notched wings were once common and now they’re not. The geniuses who rename birds ought to have a big meeting and change the Common Nighthawk to the Uncommon Nighthawk.

Nighthawks used to remind me of small, dark Ospreys. Their wings have a similar shape. And I liked their buzzing, chirping atonal calls. More of a cicada sound than a bird sound.

Our Nighthawks would hang around overhead at sunset, not going anywhere, just making weird noises and flying hawk-like, or swallow-like, in circles.

I thought they were scooping up mosquitoes, but maybe they were just enjoying the fact that they could fly, fly and squawk and watch the sun disappear.

But now they’ve disappeared. Maybe they’re flying around the night sky over Edward Hopper’s diner in some alternative universe where paintings are real. They’d fit the style of the place. Bleak, serious, unforgiving. Appropriate for a bird that’s missing and presumed dead.

If you want to see Hopper’s “Nighthawks” click on this: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111628. Then click on the painting to enlarge it.

And if you want to see Nighthawks in real life, look up in early Fall, as night falls, and maybe you’ll get lucky. We haven’t, but maybe you will. Let us know.

The flock moved like a school of fish, swerving together, ruled by one collective brain. Interesting, but a sorry sight if you think individuality is a good thing.

They were blackbirds assembling for their annual migration. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Starlings and Grackles, Brown-headed Cowbirds and Red-winged Blackbirds. More uncommon types, too: Yellow-headed and Brewer’s Blackbirds.

Going south makes sense. But their conformity illustrates how individuals can let their group take over.

All birds are fun to watch. They can make every day interesting as hell. But you just can’t help liking some more than others. I like the ugly Turkey Vulture I saw today, more than I like the flocking birds.

He was hovering on big black wings over a river, and had the sky to himself. A solitary cowboy, riding alone through town, self-sufficient, impossible to influence.

By contrast, chattering blackbirds in the fall are born joiners. I’ve known people like that. I don’t want to get into a discussion about them. Mobs are people at their worst.

I also like the Great Horned Owl. He commands his own tree and nobody better come near. The incorrectly named but fierce-eyed Bald Eagle calls his own shots.

But when it comes to individuality, nobody beats the Great Blue Heron that hangs out near my house. He sees the mobbing blackbirds assembling in the trees.

He notices them as they rise in a giant blob of squawking, shitting and flapping. Like me, he doesn’t like them much.

Yet we both wonder: How do a thousand little birds agree to turn right instead of left at the same moment?

The heron wouldn’t know it, but scientists have studied such synchronized movements with computers, and they’re stymied. It’s not as simple as locating a leader that everyone follows. The group turns together as one, seemingly with no cue.

The scientists, and the heron, along with the rest of us have got to say: it’s a flocking mystery

Two birds crossed my path today. Both two-fisted hard-asses. I wondered who was tougher.

One was a Cooper’s Hawk and the other was a Belted Kingfisher.

The Cooper’s Hawk eats birds for a living so I figured it should be no contest. The Kingfisher’s a bird, therefore a meal. Something to dig into with a beak that’s sharp enough to shear metal.

Then I considered the Kingfisher. You ever look at this killer? It’s built like a linebacker. Its head is too big for its stocky body. Prickly feathers and a spear-like beak for catching fish and frogs.

If birds are modern dinosaurs, which is my view, the Kingfisher’s evidence. And it doesn’t look tasty.

It has a swagger on the wing. A prop-engine fighter from some old black-and-white World War Two movie. The bird’s mostly black and white.

The Cooper’s Hawk, though twice as big, is strangely delicate and flies silently. He hangs around bird feeders, back in the shadows, waiting for a seed eater, worm eater or fruit eater to get careless.

Then he snatches it out of the air. The hawk settles on a nearby branch, bird in hand, and scarfs it down.

This is right out of an old black-and-white monster movie. The beast that ate Tokyo. A Cooper’s Hawk, like the Kingfisher, is mostly black and white in tone.

Both are film noir birds. “Noir” birds. Shadow-colored and dangerous.

There’s a guy I know who asks things like “who’s tougher, a gorilla or a bear?” Or, “Could Rocky take Batman?” Things like that.

Today I found myself doing the same thing. In the morning when I went outside to get our newspaper, I saw the Cooper’s Hawk. Later, I saw the Belted Kingfisher as I drove near a muddy river. Two “noir” birds, and I wondered—who’d win?

I’d put my money on the Cooper’s Hawk. But it wouldn’t be easy. I don’t think he’d even try. Kingfishers look indestructible. And taste like sushi, considering their diet. No self-respecting Cooper’s Hawk likes sushi.

Especially when there are all those tastier birds coming to your feeder.

Sometimes you go to the birds. Sometimes the birds go to you.

This time of year, a few birds knock themselves cuckoo by hitting our windows. And they’re almost always the same species. The Veery.

This happened yesterday. Heard a smack against our bedroom window. On the ledge below, there it was: A Veery, dazed and confused.

It was breathing hard, eyes closed. Then eyes half open. An hour later it had flown away, glad to say. That’s the usual outcome, although I’ve seen them DOA on occasion.

During migrations I’ve seen dazed birds on the sidewalks of Chicago under hi-rise buildings. All kinds, including Veerys. I’ve also seen American Redstarts there, and other warblers.

Northern Flickers, too (you wouldn’t expect this of a hard-headed Flicker). And once, even a Woodcock that bystanders were calling an odd pigeon. They were right about the “odd” part. Ever see a Woodcock?

But when it comes to birds hitting my suburban windows, Veerys top the list. In fact, they own it.

Coincidentally, a two-fisted nature girl named Denise just emailed a cell-phone photo of a bird she’d found near her house. It was dazed and confused. I knew that look. Denise asked if I could I.D. the bird.

“Veery,” I replied, and she wrote back, “I think it’s something else.”

Maybe she’s right. There’s a bunch of Veery look-alikes. The Hermit Thrush, Gray-cheeked Thrush, Swainson’s Thrush.

Whatever the name, it was a wild bird that got concussed by a window. It was dazed and confused. I was dazed and confused, myself, last night after a few beers. Just ask the friends I was out with.

The good news is that today’s another day. And also that Denise’s bird—whatever it’s called—snapped back to life and flew away. If you ask me what it was, I’d still say Veery. Am I sure?

I’ve got a one-word answer for that. Figure it out.

There’s a dead tree around here overlooking a swamp. In its upper branches, you see cormorants. Double-crested Cormorants, by name. Although they don’t have even a single, visible crest.

Today I looked at them and realized they’re dinosaurs.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to me or anybody. We’ve all heard that birds descended from pre-historic sci-fi monsters.

The only new thing is that today, the thought hit: Hey, these hulking birds didn’t descend from dinosaurs; they are dinosaurs.

A Nova rerun that I saw last night is responsible. I don’t want to get all scientific here, but it showed some guy in China hammering open a rock, and there was a dinosaur fossil flattened inside. The fossil had a faint indication of feathers.

A prototype dino-bird? Maybe. Feathers don’t stick around like bones do. We’re not sure who had them way back when, and who didn’t.

It got me thinking: What if this one little bird-like dinosaur wasn’t the only one that had feathers? What if all dinosaurs did?

Maybe T-Rex was feathered like an Osprey instead of walking around with bare reptilian skin. Maybe the dinosaurs we saw in Jurassic Park were based on incomplete interpretations of the fossil record.

Imagine how we’d picture dogs or bears if we never knew they had fur. Naked, and looking nothing much like dogs or bears.

But wait. Didn’t feathers evolve for flight?

Maybe not. Let’s ask an ostrich. Point is: what if feathers came first, maybe as a protective covering. And flight evolved later for the small, lightweight dinosaurs. Feathers just made it possible. Hell, that’s for the science geeks to work on. They’ll get it straight eventually.

Meanwhile, today when I saw cormorants I thought: living dinosaurs.

Later I saw a Great Blue Heron at the edge of the swamp. And Mourning Doves on a wire, a circling Turkey Vulture, a flock of Starlings. I saw a Kestrel on a traffic sign, and a couple of American Goldfinches on the wing.

I still thought: dinosaurs. Not just the prehistoric-looking cormorants. All birds. Including the chicken you’re having for dinner tonight.

Dinosaurs haven’t gone extinct; they’re singing outside your window and sizzling on your grill.

I see dippers. The birds? Mainly, yeah. But other kinds, too. I’ll get to those in a moment.

I guess I’ve got dippers on the mind because our contest is ending tomorrow. And it involves a dipper that’s hidden on this website.

After mentioning on Facebook that we didn’t have the usual number of entrants, we got a boatload of last minute dipper discoverers. Not sure why Facebook’s worth something like 33 billion. But it did goose our contest.

I also see dippers that aren’t birds. Started when I walked my dog every night. I’d look at dark treetops for silhouettes of owls. And I noticed stars. I got to know the dippers. Big and little. Ursa Major, Ursa Minor.

Minor is well named, and doesn’t always show up. But you can count on Major, the big dipper. Always visible, pointing to the North Star, Polaris.

Those dippers in the night are not as interesting as the uninteresting-looking birds called ”dippers.” There are European versions, so we call ours “American Dippers.”

I saw them working in a creek that ran through a mountain town in the Rockies. Fast water didn’t faze them. They were doing what field guides said: walking on the bottom.

I’ve seen birds dive before. There’s a Pied Billed Grebe that visits our neighborhood pond. I watch it dive out of sight and pop up somewhere nearby. But the grebe, like cormorants and loons that do similar dives, are basically just swimming.

Hell, we can swim.

But how many of us can use our toenails to walk along the bottom. Against the current. That’s what dippers do. They hold their breath, grab on and walk, picking insect larvae and other bits of underwater food as they go.

The dippers in the night sky can help you navigate. But they don’t do much except show up. The dippers of the bird persuasion are stunt men.

That’s why I’m glad we received a bunch of last minute entrants for our August contest. Whether you’ve entered or not, whether you win or not, I hope you see a dipper some day.

Not one on a website, and not just the easy ones in the sky, but a real American Dipper dipping under a real American stream, walking on the bottom, then popping back up, looking uninteresting.

Until it goes under again.

This guy shows me a picture of an odd bird that he saw on the beach at South Haven, Michigan, near Chicago. Asks me to name it.

I go temporarily dumb.

“Bird watcher?” he says, “Man, you’re more like a bird quack.”

This is a good put-down because the guy’s a doctor, and the word “quack” carries weight in his business.

It’s doubly good because it comes as a result of my getting stumped by a waterfront bird. (It’s long-legged and wouldn’t quack like a duck. But there are ducks in its neighborhood.)

The bird is familiar. I know its name. But I’m stuck. Why? Could it be the Blue Moon beers that the doctor and I were drinking? Could it be the deep martini that came before the beers?

“Wait, wait, I know this bird” I say, “…a Stilt. Yeah, something like that.” My heart isn’t in it. The doc diagnoses my indecision. (“…bird quack.”)

Okay, to quote an odd movie, The Big Lebowski, “Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.” Win some, lose some.

So it does me no good to suddenly have the name of the odd bird hit like a punch right after the doctor and I part company.

But there is solace in knowing that the bird doesn’t really belong around here. Not on a Michigan beach, or anywhere near Chicago. The field guide in my mind came up empty because I’m thinking Midwest.

And it’s a Western Bird. I’ve seen these birds on California beaches. But never near Chicago. The doc’s right to say he’d seen an odd bird.

Here’s the picture that he took. Do you know what it is? Of course you do. But we can’t go back and impress him with our knowledge. That bird has flown.

My cousin works in the North Woods on the rez. He’s an archaeologist, and the tribe hired him to analyze their history.

I told this guy he was lucky to work in the woods. He said yeah, but ticks are a problem. There’s a bumper crop.

This reminded me of an experience I’d had years ago…

I’d gone into the same woods to take pictures. I spent an afternoon concealed in deadfall near a creek where I’d set out chicken from a can. Wanted to attract bears or coyotes. Maybe see a bobcat. I had binoculars and a camera.

A coyote came. It was big. Might’ve been a wolf. And a fox showed up. Separately of course. Later I saw porcupines, deer, Great Blue, and Black-crowned Night Herons, Scarlet Tanagers, Evening and Pine Grosbeaks. Several types of woodpecker and an Osprey. Bald Eagles, too.

At my rented cabin on Lake Gogebic, I took off my shirt and noticed wood ticks around my middle. A lot. They must’ve crawled in when I sat on the ground. They were bloated with my blood.

Generally there are two kinds of ticks to know: Wood ticks like these, and smaller deer ticks. It’s the deer ticks that carry Lyme Disease. Wood ticks can give you Spotted Fever and Tularemia. But I wasn’t interested in the science of tick-borne disease at the time.

I was freaked.

There’s a procedure for dislodging ticks, but at that moment I forgot it. I slapped and scraped.

(Procedure? Yeah, right. I’ve heard you’re supposed to stand still when you see a grizzly. But when you see one, you’re gonna run like hell. So much for procedure.)

The ticks came off like velcro being un-stuck. They popped out or broke up, and piled on the floor. A smeary mess. Not a proud moment in my exploring experience. I showered and soaped and didn’t get a tick disease.

But there are tick diseases you should know about. What are they? Sorry. This website is about birds and fun. If you want to read about sickness, the internet is all too obliging. Google away, but be careful. It’s crazy-making stuff.

Just remember that when you go into the woods, there’s a bumper crop of ticks these days. And they can make you pay a price in blood for every other thing you see there.

I’m on the shore of Lake Superior in the wild U.P. where the locals are called “Yoopers.”

This place exists apart from time. The year could be 2010, 1950, or 1492. You have no way of knowing. Not even a jet plane’s track spoils the sky.

This superior lake looks pretty unspoiled. By comparison, its kid brother, Lake Michigan, seems cloudier. Maybe civilized shorelines domesticated it. Lake Michigan’s a dog; Superior’s a wolf.

The idea of a wolf reminds me that wolves are common around Lake Superior. Nearby Isle Royale has packs. Moose live there, too. Moose and wolves; a consumer society.

The woods rising behind me from the stony beach have black bears. Also bobcats, coyotes, the occasional lynx, Pileated Woodpeckers, a Ruffed Grouse that I almost stepped on. And skittish deer, nothing like the jaded suburban kind. It’s said there are cougars, too.

This place is a time machine. I dialed “pre-industry” or “pre-human” or “pre-smog,” whatever. And hit the button. Like I said, it could be hundreds of years ago. Hell, it could be thousands of years ago. Maybe a mastodon will walk by. My archaeologist cousin found mastodon bones in a field south of here. Yeah, a mastodon would be at home.

I turn to the lake and raise my binoculars. Over Superior I look for gulls but get nothing. That’s okay. Gulls aren’t that interesting. And earlier I saw three Bald Eagles. Black Terns, too, near a small forest lake.

I also saw Evening Grosbeaks, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (unexpected in the North Woods, but perfectly at home), the grouse, three kinds of herons, an Osprey that seemed uncomfortable on eagle turf, a flock of out-of-season Snow Buntings and Ravens.

Plus, I figure I’ll see Pileated Woodpeckers on the trail. These make me think of the time machine again. They’re pre-historic looking with pterodactyl profiles.

I move into the forest, climbing. There’s something odd in a tree. Baby bear? No, it’s a porcupine.

I get close and take its picture with a cell phone. No prize winner, but it records the moment.

The porcupine was quivering. Guess I made him nervous. I left him alone quickly. Here, above Lake Superior they call this place the Porcupine Mountains.

It’s Michigan’s “Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.” I figure: yeah, they got that name right. I have a picture to prove it.

I move up the trail. Lots of pines. It’s quiet. This is a good place to be. And this is a good time to be here. Because it could be any time at all.

Some wise dude once said: “The itch to travel is partly an itch to live in a different bird book, somebody else’s field guide.”

Okay, that dude was me. In “Itch Vs. Twitch,” one of these Daily Sightings pieces.

Hey, if you can’t quote yourself, maybe you’re not saying much. All that aside, those words came to mind again today…

A package with exotic markings arrived. Inside, was my new copy of “The Birds of Australia, Eighth Edition,” by Ken Simpson and Nicolas Day, with Peter Trusler.

This is from Princeton Field Guides, another example of their fine work. If you want to travel vicariously by “living in somebody else’s bird book,” here’s your ticket.

The birds in this book look familiar at first. But just wait.

You know you’re in for a ride from the opening pages. They don’t start with boring sea birds the way our guides do.  This book opens with giants that waddled out of the Dr. Seuss department. Then you get the boring sea birds.

But boring’s the wrong word when talking about Australia. The country’s birds are a Star Trek episode.

Remember how characters on the Enterprise looked human until you got close? Whoa, that guy’s forehead has bony plates. She’s got three nostrils. Somebody’s blue.

They weren’t all humans on that starship. Some were humanoids. And the birds of Austalia? An American might call them bird-oids.

That’s not what hard core ornithologists would say. These guys know Australian birds, and won’t be fazed by their strangeness.  Ornithology geeks will be wowed about the updating of rare species, the changes in taxonomy, the “Vagrant Bird Bulletin.”

But America’s two-fisted birdwatchers who are NOT ornithologists will read this new field guide like a sci-fi novel.

Up front, there’s a color map of Australia showing that it’s a round continent, give or take a few pointy parts. The image of a globe cannot be denied.

You’re looking at Planet Australia. And there will be bird-oids down there.

Flip to any page. The birds might at first look somewhat similar to those in American books. But, look closer. That crane’s not exactly a crane; it’s a “Brolga.” Looks, like a crane, walks like a crane…but:

“Brolga.”

Flip further into the book. Is that a page of thrushes?  Wait; they’re not like any thrushes you know. There’s a “Cinnamon Quail Thrush.” A whole new model, with a whole new color scheme.

Flip some more. The “Red-Capped Robin” is designed by an artist who doesn’t exhibit in your home town.

And for us ordinary bird watchers, the oddities just keep coming: There are Pittas, Sittellas, Pardalotes, Logrunners; a Chowchilla, a Drongo, and Figbirds.

There are Flowerpeckers and Australo-Papuan Babblers. Spinebills. And Magpies that don’t look like Magpies. Crow-like “un-crows” that are called Currawongs. And what Australia doesn’t have in the way of woodpeckers, it makes up for with parrots.

There are almost 400 pages, 780 odd birds. Literally. With maps, charts, checklists, scholarly text sections and useful tips.

A trip to Planet Australia. The only thing better than going through this book would be going through this country. (You could talk to a guy named Steve Davidson, at the Melbourne Birder, about that.)

Meanwhile, a little armchair birding is always fun. This guide to planet Australia makes it exotic fun.

The other day we heard from a guy named Greg who has a lot of two-fisted adventures. His latest involved seeing a White Ibis and an Anhinga in Illinois. You can read about it on our Facebook page.

Wait a second: did we just say “in Illinois?” Anhinga? White Ibis? Those birds don’t belong in this state. They’re jungle birds.

That got us thinking: Illinois isn’t entirely what you might think. You think it’s midwestern corn until you hit Chicago, which is smoky and windy, with the country’s tallest buildings. Illinois is a routine northern state, you figure.

But consider these places: Modesto, California. Fort Knox, Kentucky. Cortez, Colorado. Page Arizona. Yucca Flat, Nevada…Bizerte, Tunisia.

Tunisia? That’s sandy, with camels, right? And hot. Arizona, California, Nevada? All seem kind of south-of-here, you know?

But they’re located at the same latitude as the Illinois swamp where Greg saw his rare birds. 37 degrees north, give or take a few steps. Draw a line around the globe, starting at Carbondale, and it’ll run through Tunisia, California, Nevada, Arizona, all those warm-sounding places.

This talk of latitude and biological oddities reminds us of when we saw palm trees in Ireland.

From Dublin to Kerry, in latitude fifty-something (just like the temperature), Ireland has palm trees. See for yourself, if you don’t mind a crummy cell phone shot.

Why are there tropical birds in Illinois and tropical plants in Ireland? For Illinois, the answer is easy: it has its toes in the south. Jungle birds are comfortable visiting there.

And the Irish palm question is basic botany. Ireland, cool as it is, never drops below freezing. Palms can abide cool; they just don’t like frost. So they like Ireland. And you will, too, when you go.

As far as liking swamps in southern Illinois, well, if you see an Anhinga or Ibis while you’re there, maybe you won’t mind the bugs and water moccasins. Water moccasins in Illinois? Hey, if we got Anhingas…

A comment recently received….

“My wife purchased a pair of Bushnell Binoculars during a recent trip to Grand Teton National Park.  We did not have much of a choice in a small store at the lodge, but now that we’re home I’m wondering if we made a good choice in spending the $90. Can the “Two Fisted Birdwatcher” put an informative article on-line as to all the different options: auto focus or manual, one handed or two handed devices, magnification pros and cons, etc. This may be particularly useful for those who are new to bird watching. (Notify me about new posts and other two-fisted news items.)”

— Avi V.

Avi, thanks for the question. But as the title of this post suggests, the same dubious bumper sticker wisdom that spawned the phrase, “Guns don’t shoot people. People shoot people.” applies here.

The gun philosophy is controversial. Polarizing, too. We want no part of that action. But the similarity to your binocular question is unavoidable.

It’s not about the binoculars. It’s about the birds. And the bird watcher. Still, we wish we could jump into an informed discussion of optics for you. But in spite of the countertop display (see photo) that we encountered–unexpectedly–in a local wildlife outfitters, we don’t have much to say about binoculars or scopes. We’re not into the hardware. We’re into the wild.

I enjoy ID-ing birds bare-eyed, if I don’t have a pair of binoculars handy. And when I do use them, any kind are just fine. As it turns out, coincidentally, I also have the Bushnells you mentioned, and think they’re great. Clean, crisp views, and built sturdy.

But I’m easy. If you want real expert opinions, go to this link: http://www.ilbirds.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=6cbe0f5a4ac61f5578597a85e16d7195&board=20.0. If that didn’t work because it’s so freakin’ long, you can also get there by going to Illinois Birders’ Forum, www.ilbirds.com, and looking under “Resources – Birding Equipment.” There’s a lot of other good stuff on that website, too. While you’re there check it out.

Meanwhile, here’s yet another twist that parphrases a common observation about guns: “It ain’t the binoculars. It’s the guy holding them.” I guess that’s what we believe. Good luck, Avi. And thanks for subscribing to Two-Fisted Birdwatcher.