It’s high July. High nineties. High noon. A good time for bird watching? No way. Do I go? Sure. Just want a little wildness around me.

A grasshopper lands on my hand. I shake it off, a chicken reflex that I’m not proud of. There are butterflies. More than usual. Big yellow ones and a big purple one.

I remember reading somewhere that these bugs were originally called “flutter-by’s” and got Spoonerized into “butter-flies.” But they don’t hold my interest.

I came with binoculars to see what meager bird sightings I’d find during this quiet time. And there’s a black Indigo Bunting. Huh.

Its blue plumage runs dark anyway, but this one’s high on a branch with backlighting, making it into a black silhouette.

I see bright yellow American Goldfinches. You can count on them in summer when other birds are scarce.

Then a big score, and well-named: A Summer Tanager.

It’s like a Scarlet Tanager without black on wings and tail. All red. Hadn’t seen one yet this year. A hot sighting for a hot day.

I walk on and meet a guy down the trail. A serious dude with a tripod scope. We nod. He says, “Get the Summer Tanager?” He’d noticed my binoculars.

“Yeah,” I say.

He nods. Then, “Well, have a good day.”

I say, “Hey, you too.”

A proper trail interchange: brief.

There’s a sign by the entrance that says “Conservation Area.” Some people must think it says “Conversation Area.”

You see them in here sometimes, yakking away, causing wildlife to hide. Nice people, sure. You’d talk with them at a bar or barbecue. But in the wild, conversation is best kept short. Like the one I have with tripod guy.

Back in the parking area, my car is an oven. I air it out. Too hot a day to be bird watching. Yeah, I don’t believe that.

Even if I didn’t see a Summer Tanager or Silhouette Bunting (new name for this bird), I still would’ve had a grasshopper land on my hand, thought about the odd origin of the word “butterfly” and walked through prairie grass near big trees.

A quiet day in a quiet place in high July.

Sal, Dean and I are at the bar. Sal says, “Life’s an itch.” Dean says, “Then you die.” A new twist on an old banality, thanks to several beers.

I jump in, just to be friendly. “Sometimes, life’s a twitch.”

These smart guys know what “twitch” means when a two-fisted bird watcher says it. But this odd British word gets what it deserves. No response.

“Itch” caught my ear because I’m getting an itch to travel. But I’m not going to twitch.

When I arrive someplace different, I notice local birds. This makes travel better. You don’t even need wilderness. At Denver’s airport I see Black-billed Magpies. This means, okay, I’m in the Rockies.

Near Disney World, we see Boat-tailed Grackles and Cattle Egrets right away. Don’t have those back home. Must be Florida. Cool.

In Ireland, you’ve got gray-and-black Hooded Crows that we don’t have here. In Bermuda the Great Kiskadee’s common. Around the hotel in Maui, trees are loud with introduced Mynas, and you see gray-and-white Red-Crested Cardinals.

The itch to travel is partly an itch to live in a different bird book, somebody else’s field guide.

That’s the itch. What’s the twitch? It’s something way different. It’s for the heavy hitting, two-fisted birdwatchers who make this interest into a Nascar-style sport.

Twitching is traveling someplace to see a bird you heard about. Twitchers get news from the bird underground. Like: there’s an Anhinga in Terre Haute. The twitcher will drop everything and head there to get a rare Indiana Anhinga for his list.

A pinkish Ross’s Gull in Boston draws twitchers from all over. This is an Arctic bird, and when spotted here, it’s a coup for a lister who’s a twitcher.

There you go: musings over the words “itch” and “twitch.”  A little bar-fueled reverie. Although you wouldn’t say reverie in the bar. Even the comment about life being a twitch brought profound silence.

But who cares. I’ve got an itch to get out of town. Maybe in the Southwest I’ll see a Trogan or Phainopepla, but I wouldn’t go there just to see them.

That would be twitchy, which ain’t me. If it’s you, I tip my glass in your direction.

The other day a guy named Sandy wrote us, asking if we knew of a guide who could take him around New Zealand and parts of Australia.

It got us thinking: People have questions and they’re looking for answers. Maybe we can provide an occasional service in “Daily Sightings.” So here goes: Presenting the first ever bulletin board posting on Two-Fisted Birdwatcher.

“…Experienced birder is looking to bird New Zealand, North Island, South Island and Stewart Island with a private birding guide. Planning to spend two or three weeks in this endeavor. Would also consider birding the northeast of Australia with a competent birding guide. The Australian side-trip would be prior to New Zealand or immediately following. Considering the period from mid September to the end of October.”

Another reason why we’re posting this: we have some friends down under. When it comes to two-fisted countries, Australia and New Zealand wrote the book. (Hey there, Melbourne Birders).

If you’re a guide who can handle the job, or if you know of one, let’s hear from you. Use the contact form on this website or the comment box below. We’ll pass along your information to Sandy.

Thanks. Maybe we’ll use “daily sightings” for other kinds of bulletin board notices. There was a guy not long ago who asked us if we knew the name of a blue-headed red bird that he saw in upstate New York. And another guy who asked us to help him identify a vulture-sized bird that had a forked tail.

We responded with an answer to the fork-tail mystery, and the guy wrote back: yeah, it was a Frigatebird. But as far as blue-headed red birds, well, we didn’t think Painted Buntings were in New York. But then, birds can go anywhere they want.

And so can birders. Good luck, New Zealand explorer.

Fourth of July. You see a lot of American symbolism. Bald Eagles are part of it. That’s okay. We like Bald Eagles. But we don’t see too many of these big birds in our American neighborhoods.

What we do see, and what you probably saw this morning when you went out, are American Robins.

We don’t want to rock the symbolism boat, but we think the American Robin could’ve made a decent national bird. It’s the most American bird we’ve got.

It’s cheerful, brave and successful. American characteristics. And tough. When a pollutant (DDT) decimated Bald Eagle populations until it got banned, American Robins were still everywhere.

This bird’s name was mangled by Europeans who didn’t understand what they were seeing. (That’s why we keep saying “American Robin,” the correct term).

Europeans mistook our new world thrush for their old world “Robins.” They were thinking about a little European flycatcher with orange in front and brown on top. The Robin. Completely different bird. Pilgrims didn’t have binoculars and probably weren’t interested anyway, so they called our orange and brown thrushes “robins.”

(A European name that’s incorrect is nothing new. Explorers dubbed Native Americans “Indians” because they thought this was India.)

Like a lot of Americans, the American Robin has got oil-related problems looming. Some of these birds migrate. They get scarce in winter, then fly back to remind us when spring’s coming.

But, what’s going to happen this year? Will the American Robins who head to the Gulf coast find a livable environment? Will they return after a season down there? Well, they’re American birds. They’re tough. What’s more American than the ability to make a comeback?

Let’s be optimistic.

I was watching the Cubs game when I heard a BONK. Should’ve been a bat connecting with a pitch. But it wasn’t. (In all fairness to the Cubs, they do occasionally hit the ball. But, again, that wasn’t what I heard.)

From the next room my wife said “Aw, a bird bammed into the window. Come see.”

This has happened before. Our back windows face a pond. Sometimes birds see the reflection and fly into it. After hitting they either rebound and take off. Or get knocked cold and take off later.

But sometimes they don’t survive.

I downed the rest of my beer, left the Cubs to their own devices, and went outside to see what caused the BONK. It was a Phoebe, unmoving. I picked it up. “See anything?” my wife asked.

“A Phoebe.”

“A who?”

“Phoebe. A kind of bird.”

“Hmm. Don’t know that one.”

She’s not alone. Most people would call this little grayish bird a sparrow. But it was an Eastern Phoebe, and it was where you find Phoebes: near water. Eastern Phoebes are similar to other flycatchers, but unlike the difficult empidonax group, they have no wingbars.

And their tails wag. This is a good way to know a Phoebe. Look in the field guide; you’ll see.

There are other Phoebes, too. The Black Phoebe and Say’s Phoebe are found out west. Not sure how you pronounce “Say.” But I’m assuming it’s “Cey.” As in former Cubs third baseman Ron Cey, also known as “the penguin,” an entirely different bird that’s easier to identify.

Cey makes me think baseball again. And I gotta get back to the Cubbies. But first I took a good look at the Eastern Phoebe in my hand. It didn’t make it. No movement.

I’m in bright sun and take a moment to study the bird. I think about the unappreciated intricacy of its hard-wired design. The template for its color pattern. Its bill, built to catch bugs in flight. Its high forehead giving it an intelligent look.

Studying this Phoebe, close up, I had the thought: this is a really complicated piece of work. Eyes with moist movable lids, feet engineered to hinge and lock. For something so small, it was a helluva machine.

And it had been running fine. But now it was out of the game. Whoa, a heavy thought. Where’d that come from? I needed another beer. I set the bird down under a bush and went in. The complexities of biological clockwork and the irrational inevitability of death are not subjects I wanted thrown at me.

The Cubs were looking good in their blue uniforms, and Wrigley’s green vines were looking good, too. I wanted to get back to the mindless comfort of baseball and beer. And I sorta did. The Cubs were still in the game. But, c’mon, I had no illusions about where they’d wind up.

Subject: me being an idiot. Witness: my son. (But you’ll soon know about it, too). Setting: a crowd in a forest preserve watching a ranger display a Red-tailed Hawk on a gloved hand and feed it a mouse.

But that bloody chomp was to be the climax. Before that, we had to endure a lecture about Red-tails. This one couldn’t fly but was healthy enough to be an exhibit. A hobbled hawk is not a happy sight. And I hadn’t patience for the monologue; there wasn’t much I didn’t know about hawks.

I wandered back to my car for a bag of cookies. Big chocolate chip cookies. I wanted one, and I knew my kid would, too. I returned to the group. Where was my son? I stood on a wood-rail fence to see better. There he was.

People below me… then the ranger…and on the other side, more people, with my son in back. I caught his eye and gestured with a cookie. Then I flung it his way. I was confident that he understood I’d left the boring lecture, got cookies, and was giving him one.

Time out: If you think this is about how the hawk sees my cookie and makes a move to get it, sorry. Didn’t happen. This hawk only had eyes for mouse.

What did happen: I spun the big cookie toward my kid. Used a backhand style, giving it lift, like a Frisbee. My kid’s good at grabbing Frisbees. What could go wrong? Well, if a spinning disk tilts, it might bank and miss its target.

This is what happened to our cookie. It arched unseen over the crowd, and landed gently on the head of a man standing next to my son.

The guy was wearing one of those flat caps, the kind that have no real brim. Its top was flat as an aircraft carrier, and our cookie settled there. The guy didn’t feel it. Nobody noticed. Just me. And my son, who was wide-eyed.

Later he explained that he had no idea I was aiming for him, but assumed that, being bored, I had obtained cookies, located a bird watcher with a flat cap, and tossed one onto his head.

He told me he thought this was pretty damn funny, and he was glad I did it. I knew it had been unintentional, and I was an idiot. But if it gave him some amusement, well, that’s what dads are for.

Footnote: This really happened.

There’s a wing of the birding community that lives to list. Loves to list. Lusts to list. Birding is collecting. So this is understandable.

All the guys I hung with had lists. Lists of ball players, of girls they’d been with. Of micro-breweries they liked.

Do I have bird list, a life list? C’mon, I’ve been wandering woods and fields since I was a kid. Of course I have one. But it’s not typical.

Somewhere in my stack of bird books, there’s a beat-up “Golden Guide to Field Identification – Birds of North America,” By Robbins, Bruun and Zimm. Copyright 1966. It’s so old it has a Baltimore Oriole in it. Fine by me.

My list is in this book. Actually, it is this book.

Not that I need a list. I recall every bird I’ve seen. Ask me if I’ve seen a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher and I’ll tell you where I first saw one in June ’79. But, as the computer culture has taught us, it’s smart to back things up.

So back to my backup.

A few years ago I went through that old bird book with pen in hand. Next to every bird I’d seen, I put a check. Smooth-billed Ani? Sure. Kiskadee. Clark’s Nutcracker. My first Pine Grosbeak. I remembered them, and checked their picture. I still add checks as I see new birds.

That’s my life list. You can’t turn many pages without seeing checks. How many? A while back I ran the numbers but quit somewhere in the decent triple digits. Guess I don’t have list lust.

But I respect the hardy guys who do. No matter how two-fisted a birdwatcher you might be, somebody’s always better.

That’s okay. I see that I’d checked Abert’s Towhee on page 304. I remember the hazy Arizona afternoon when I saw it, and smile.

Maybe one of these days I’ll run out of unchecked birds in these old pages. But when I leaf through the shorebirds, the alcids, auks and puffins, I figure, no, probably not going to be a problem.

There’s something new in the world of bird websites. It’s a forum. Another forum, you say? Okay, stick with this: It’s not just another forum. It’s a better one.

We’ve had a forum with similar quality in Illinois for a while. Illinois Birders’ Forum. The guy behind it is a two-fisted type named Greg. He’s more than a bird guru; he’s an explorer. He’s hiked Amazon jungles, discovered unknown toads (yeah, toads, but he’s a bird guy), and has interesting friends.

For example, when he recently commented on our observation about “turfs” within forests, he mentioned that ornithologist buddies told him Swainson’s Thrushes defend a patch of woodland every summer in Canada, and amazingly these same individuals defend their own patch of forest in Costa Rica every winter.

Point is, Greg’s connected to the research side of things. He’s a good observer and writer. It’s good news for us that he’s taken the forum concept that he honed in Illinois, and has done a uniquely American thing: he’s created a new national version.

“North American Birders’ Forum” is in the soft-launch stage. That means there’s fine tuning going on. But it’s pretty okay, even now. It’s a single resource for whatever kind of birder you are at the moment, casual or serious.

It clues you in on rare sightings, news reports and other cool websites. It gives you a voice in the giant, democratic conversation that the web is designed to encourage.

It has a “links” section where birders can tell birders about links they like. And it’s adding a “listers central.” So you’ll be able to keep an online record of your own lists organized by month, year, lifetime, zone, whatever.

No point in our describing North American Birders’ forum any further. All you need is the web address and you can go there:

http://birdersforum.com/

Check it out. But come back here once in a while, too. Just for the fun of it.

You bushwhack through the woods until you hit a slow-moving river. There’s an old log there. Makes a good place to sit. You go often enough, and the place starts to feel familiar.

Kentucky author Chris Offut wrote a book about spending his mornings by a river. Gave him a chance to think. (The book is “Same River Twice,” in case you’re interested).

Sitting in one spot is a way to see wildlife. There’s a chipmunk that comes around. Usually I see a coiled snake sleeping near the log. Deer walk by. There’s a Belted Kingfisher watching the water from an overhanging branch.

There are Red-headed and Downy Woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, Swainson’s Thrushes and occasionally I see a Woodcock. You wouldn’t see them if you were on the move. But you’re on the log.

The idea hit: this little spot is a neighborhood.

It’s a neighborhood just like the kind you find in cities. New York isn’t one big city, it’s a hundred little cities. The neighborhoods are defined by streets and El tracks.

It’s the same in the woods. This half-acre by the river is defined by a stand of trees to my left, the log by the bank, and a little creek on the right. Within those perimeters, it’s a neighborhood.

I understand now that it’s not a different chipmunk every time. This guy lives here. It’s the same Belted Kingfisher on the branch. His branch. Same coiled snake. Same neighborhood deer herd. The woodpeckers and Flickers live in those trees; this is their turf.

That’s my sighting of the day: an idea. The idea that the woods aren’t an expanse of wildness, but a collection of well defined turfs. And when you get to know one, you go back to it. And you like it. You’re not just experiencing nature. But human nature, too.

Got a comment tonight about our latest post, “Bear Pressure.” You can see it in the comment box under that post. Good stuff. Thanks Scott.

But the thing that really stands out is a link to a website that Scott’s wife found. It’s called “if it was my home,” and it’s not about bears, but about the oil in the Gulf. The interactive site let’s you visualize how the oil spill would overlay your neck of the woods. There are questions and answers, too. Also pictures. And information about what you can do.

We have nothing more to say about this ongoing story, for now. Nothing that would be worth more than the information you’ll find on “ifitwasmyhome.com” Go to it: (And thanks again to Scott and his wife).

http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/#loc=Las+Vegas,+NM,+USA&lat=35.593889&lng=-105.216667&x=-105.216667&y=35.593889&z=7

Over a few beers, a guy I know told me he shot a bear. He shook his head and blamed it on peer pressure. I said nothing for a bit. Then I said: beer pressure?

I’d heard him okay, but I was interested in busting balls. If there are two things that piss me off it’s peer pressure and shooting bears.

I’d gone looking for bears myself on occasion but not to kill them. I wanted to walk the ground they walked. I saw a grizzly in a Yellowstone valley, but I was on a mountain. Even through binoculars it looked like a bug, and I don’t count that as a sighting.

I saw a black bear in Alaska but I was on water and it was on shore, so that can’t count either. I’ve hiked Michigan’s U.P., rich bear country and seen no bears. I can live with that. So can the bears.

On the plus side, when I was looking for bears I saw Evening Grosbeaks, Pine Grosbeaks, Black Terns, Snow Buntings, Pileated Woodpeckers, Bald Eagles, Ospreys, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and other species I don’t normally see. Pileateds and eagles, seen close, made up for not seeing bears.

But back to the guy telling me about bears over beers. He got talked into a Canadian bear hunting package by business buddies. He said no, but they pushed, suggesting he was unmanly.

So he found himself in a sniper’s tree above a stack of meat covered with molasses. A bear came. The guy shot it through the heart and felt bad about it.

Well, there was much to feel bad about. I agreed. He said he felt bad about the evil trick of molasses, and bad about the killing. Then he said the thing that bothered him most was that he gave in to peer pressure.

He threw back his beer and ordered another. I thought about saying “beer pressure” again. I like messing with words, but wasn’t in the mood any more, so I said nothing.

The following bit of information might have been quietly added to our Two-Fisted Library page. Or it would have made sense in our Heavy Duty Ornithology page. Couldn’t decide. So we put it here.

“Daily Sightings” takes a temporary tour into the world of the bookish. Our sighting today is a website called “The Birder’s Library.” A friend from Princeton University Press brought it to our attention. We looked. Somewhat reluctantly. But we gotta admit, we like this website.

It’s got a two-fisted commitment to a simple concept: Reviewing books and other materials about birds, birding and ornithology. Currently it has a review of a book published by Princeton, “All About Birds: A Short Illustrated History of Ornithology.” You’d have to read the review to see if you want this book. But that’s the idea.

At first we thought that spending any time with such a book would be about as exciting as watching bird droppings dry. But after reading the review, we had to admit that some interesting things are revealed. Ornithology has a somewhat hidden history. And there are pictures.

The Birder’s Library website has reviews of countless books about birds and birding, including kids’ books, field guides, even fiction and periodicals. It also reviews CDs, DVDs and I-Phone Apps. It’s a labor of love created by a guy who loves this category.

With all the craziness we hear about every day on CNN (gotta stop watching that), it’s nice to know there’s an honest guy somewhere who’s a bird book librarian. A guy who cares about an honest sub-category of a sub-category and has made something meaningful out of it for anyone else who cares. Like us.

We give two fists up for Birder’s Library.          (http://www.birderslibrary.com).

The bird might have been a pelican or a cormorant. I know one from the other, sure, but this bird was so coated that it was hard to tell. It was the outline of a bird. The way a taffy apple is the outline of an apple. Even its eyes were covered.

This was my sighting of the day. Not from fields and woods near my home. It was sighted on CNN. A bird covered in tarry oil that’s spreading across the Gulf.

This isn’t another pointless complaint about the destruction of Gulf wildlife. There’s plenty of complaining going around. We won’t add to it. This is an honest inquiry into why I felt something in my gut that went beyond the condition of one bird.

It had to do with symbolism. Not the kind of thing we want to pursue particularly, but sometimes it’s unavoidable; it invades the back of your mind.

It’s because the bird buried in brown stuff had wings. Birds are all about wings. All about flying. That’s why I got interested in them. As a kid I wanted to fly out of every schoolroom I sat in. When I see a bird fly I appreciate the power of a whim. The bird wants to go somewhere, and it goes there.

Sometimes I aim my binoculars at a bird and before I focus, it takes off. I don’t get mad. I say, why not? Go with your whim, man. Birds aren’t made to sit still. They follow their whims. Because they can. Because they have wings.

So when I saw that bird glopped up, unable to fly, I guess it symbolized the fact that glop happens. The discomfort in my gut went beyond feelings for one victimized bird. It was a generalized feeling that came from understanding that the ability to follow whims can sometimes be taken away. And there’s not much you can do about it.

It’s two-handed. Two palmed. Too freakin’ interesting not to do something with. Our friend Pandy sent this picture.

I’ve always found that it’s hard to get hummingbirds to hold still. They’re not famous for attention spans. Okay, this shot is full of cuteness, and cuteness isn’t what we’re all about here.

But still, we’ve gotta admit it’s cool. Especially because the red in that Ruby-throated male is living up to its name. Most Ruby-throated Hummingbirds I’ve seen have darker throats. You know they’re red, but it’s a matter of how light hits.

West of the Rockies hummingbirds are common. I had an outdoor dinner with an L.A. business associate once, and various hummingbirds darted with a whistling sound all through the meal. After a while we got used to these little space alien birds.

But in our part of the country they’re more of a novelty. So, this picture could not be denied. Two hands, three hummers, a two-fisted nod of approval.

It’s not CNN’s “live feed” of oil gushing from the sea floor in the Gulf. That’s not news. It’s olds. News does that. Gets old fast. We won’t add to the million voices bitching about the broken well. No point. It’s like bitching about the Cubs. No point.

You can’t stop oil from spoiling the Gulf. It might spoil your day, thinking about it. So you turn away from news of the Gulf’s ruination. Then you see the one picture that stops you cold.

It’s not going to be a picture of tarred and feathered birds. We’ve seen those. Remember Alaska? No, what makes your blood freeze is new: a close-up of reeds in swampland. The reeds sit in orange, sludgy wavelets. The oil, or whatever the hell it is, reached the Gulf’s complicated swampy shoreline.

We knew this blob would screw up open waters. We knew it would mess up fish, birds and business. We can’t stop it. (Seems nobody can, but the world of investigative journalism is working that issue).

Okay, you figure, the sea has lost, and is lost. Maybe the authorities will skim some sludge away, but you don’t know how that works.

The unthinkable thing is that sludge would get into the wetlands. That it would stick to cypress and mangrove roots, and coat the weeds, reeds and rushes where nobody can go. That it would get into root systems of steamy jungle plants. That it would get into alligators’ eyes.

You can’t skim it away once it’s in there. That’s the picture you didn’t want to see but just did. Green stalks of swamp grass coated with orange stuff floating in an orange swamp.

As Ed Abbey once said, the unthinkable was always thinkable.

Noon. Birds are quiet. Even bugs are on break. A better time for bird watching is dawn, if you can get your butt out of bed. But you take what you can get. It’s spring migration. You want to see what’s going on, and you’ve only got lunchtime. You head to the wild area.

There’s a van in the parking lot. Two house painters relax inside, eating sandwiches, listening to the radio. Everybody takes lunch in their own way. You’re going for a hike. If you spot birds, fine, but you’ve got small expectations.

You lean on a tree and wait. Then you see a speck of blue in a lot of green. An Indigo Bunting. As you glass it, sun comes from behind a cloud and the blue brightens. You look until you get bored.

At noon, birds must be tired. They’ve worked all morning, up early, putting in their time. Like the guys in the van, they need a break. There’s an “out to lunch” sign on the forest.

You can still bird-watch, but you have to do it a little differently. In the early morning, you’d look for movement. Hey, a Wilson’s Warbler. Gotcha. But lunch hour requires a different tactic: Glass the trees without waiting for movement. You’ll see empty branches. But keep at it. Soon you’ll see a bird on break.

Today there was a Brown-headed Cowbird on a low limb, doing nothing. Then there was an Eastern Phoebe at the forest edge. This bird rarely sits still; it’s a flycatcher. Also sitting quietly was an Eastern Bluebird. Another scan and you see an Eastern Kingbird.

(Why all the “Eastern” names? Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Kingbird. Well, that’s what they’re called, if you play by the rules. Not always easy. In a minute there’s going to be an incorrectly named oriole).

Glass the nearby clearing. Nothing. The prairie’s out to lunch, too. But wait. There’s an iridescent Tree Swallow on a reed. And a Song Sparrow. No song from this sparrow, but why would there be? He’s on break.

So it goes. Before leaving the preserve, you’ve seen birds that you don’t see around the house. You got fresh air. Some exercise. Not a bad lunch.

The van’s gone when you get to the parking area. Work cannot be denied. As you pull away, you hear birds. They’re on the job again. To make this point, a Baltimore Oriole zooms in front of your windshield. Okay, everybody, back to work.