The phrase “eagle eye” popped up. We’d posted a little story about a carrier pigeon. A reader questioned it. Cool interchange. It pointed out that our readers, being eagle-eyed, don’t miss much.

This reminded me of a day when I was lying in a clearing and saw a bird known for its eyes. Why was I on the ground? One way to see birds is to get off your feet. Find a secluded spot, sit down, lie back. Birds will come.

I saw a Ruby-throated Hummingbird hover nearby. Don’t see them when tramping the trail. I saw Eastern Kingbirds, a Brown Thrasher, a red fox, but that’s not where this is going.

Looking up, I saw seagulls. I didn’t grab the binoculars. Gulls are in a family of birds I categorize as generics. Sorry, I know birding purists will see a Kittiwake or Ross’s Gull when I see a generic gull.

I do know a Laughing Gull from a Herring Gull (it’s the one that’s laughing, right?), but I usually don’t I.D. these birds. They’re like flycatchers. Too many look too much alike.

Above the gulls I noticed other soaring birds. Black, with wide wings. Hey, Turkey Vultures. For these, I used binoculars. Like planes stacked over O’Hare, we had levels of circling birds. First gulls, then vultures.

But wait: Above the vultures there was a speck. A single bird, tiny due to distance. It had nothing to do with vultures. This was stacked higher. I could see dark wings with splayed tips.

Sun was shining white through the bird’s tail. The head was white. This was rare: a Bald Eagle. I thought of the humbling old idea that no matter how high up you are, somebody’s higher.

The gulls were up there enjoying scenery, the vultures were higher, looking for food, but there was something even higher. What was the eagle doing? It was looking at me.

That’s ego-centric, sure, but I felt it. Eye contact. He was looking at me because I didn’t belong in a field. And I was looking at him because he was an eagle.

I needed binoculars and all he needed was eagle eyes. He was like the guy who commented on our carrier pigeon story. He didn’t miss much.

You’re walking to work in the concrete canyons of Chicago and up ahead three or four people are looking at something on the ground. It’s a body.

Around this time of year, migrating birds hit tall buildings. Some birds are killed. Chicago has a lot of tall buildings.

You approach and say, “What’s going on?” Someone says, “A dead pigeon.”

But these ninnies are looking at a Northern Flicker. A male, with a red patch on its gray-blue head. It has a long beak, tan chest with black spots. You can see yellow under its wings.

“A pigeon, eh?”

Someone says, “Wonder what killed it.” Someone else says, “Maybe some bad birdseed.”

It’s always cool to see a Flicker. Although you prefer them alive, in the wild. Eating ants on the ground or climbing the sides of trees.

The bird’s long tongue is out of its beak. A cartoonish cliche, the corpse with its tongue out. No pigeon has a tongue that long. That’s a woodpecker tongue, an ant-eater tongue.

No pigeon has red on its head, yellow under its wings, or a beak that long. But the people who stopped and stared weren’t stupid. They saw a large, multi-colored bird in the city, and drew on common wisdom: pigeon.

Once again, the thought hits that you see what you know. This has been covered elsewhere here (Banjos, Birds and Janis, in Viewpoints), but it’s interesting.

Somebody sees a car. Somebody else sees a Lexus. Awareness lives in the specific, not the general. But that’s getting way too philosophical.

Meanwhile, there’s a dead Flicker on the ground and people think it’s a pigeon. At least they didn’t say it was a bird. On the other hand, that statement would be true. While calling it a pigeon was a false statement.

Getting philosophical again. Sorry.

Next time I see a Fox Sparrow I’m going to think of Teddy Roosevelt.

I like Fox Sparrows. They’re big and burly for sparrows. But their being burly has nothing to do with why I’m going to think of Roosevelt. He wasn’t all that big a guy, anyway; around five-eight and only heavy-set when he got old.

I like the Fox Sparrow’s thrush-like, streaky breast and rust color. These sparrows are prairie birds. I live near prairies in the Prairie State of Illinois. Land of Lincoln, as they say, but I’m thinking of Roosevelt.

This guy was our toughest president. Two-fisted, literally.

As a young man in the Dakota badlands he had an altercation with a drunken cowboy. The cowboy got in Roosevelt’s face and held a six-gun in each hand. He teased Roosevelt about being “four eyes,” something like that.

Roosevelt cold-cocked the cowboy. One punch. And got some respect in the badlands.

He was a big game hunter, and I’m not sure that’s really sporting, but it was a different era and people had different ideas about animals. He was also a bird watcher.

The first two-fisted birdwatcher.

His idea of spotting birds sometimes involved shooting them. That was one of Audubon’s methods of looking at birds, too. Times change.

But Roosevelt knew the birds by name. He even wrote a book about them. He was more than a bird watcher. He was an ornithologist.

Like all bird watchers, he didn’t miss much. Toward the end of his term in the White House, he was in the garden with his sister. As they talked, he picked up some tiny thing from the ground.

He held it between calloused fingers. It was a feather, presumably rust-colored and streaky. “Hmm,” he said, “very early for a Fox Sparrow.”

This isn’t a random comment to show that this guy was interested in birds. These were the final words of “Mornings on Horseback,” a National Book Award-winning biography by David McCullough.

They were powerful enough to end this 400-plus-page masterwork with a strong finish. I recommend this book. I also recommend knowing something about Theodore Roosevelt.

I’ll think about this tough old bird when I see a Fox Sparrow. Maybe you will, too.

Today, an unexpected Great Blue Heron flew toward me. These big birds are solitary, so I figured he’d veer away when he realized the beach he’d intended to land on was occupied.

Maybe he had poor vision (unlikely in a bird designed for fishing and frogging), or maybe he didn’t care. I thought of an F-18 dropping onto the deck of a carrier. Getting bigger, almost hovering, then down.

The heron tucked its wings and stood unusually close. I waited for him to realize his mistake and leave. But he didn’t want to move just yet. My being there didn’t matter. This bird would stand his ground.

A Great Blue Heron is described in the two-fisted novel, “Cold Mountain.” Charles Frazier’s writing is memorable. Here are some of his words:

“The heron made tiny precise adjustments of his narrow head as if having trouble sighting around his blade of beak…he was a solitary pilgrim, strange in his ways and governed by no policy or creed common to flocking birds..”

“…no policy or creed common to flocking birds…” Good stuff, strong and true. Here’s more:

“…then the heron slowly opened its wings. The process was carried out as if it were a matter of hinges and levers, cranks and pulleys. All the long bones under feathers and skin were much in evidence….”

While I was thinking about these words, especially “cranks and pulleys,” the bird did that. He opened his wings, maybe deciding he’d had enough of me.

As I looked at him, I figured: words don’t do the job. Even if they’re written by a guy like Frazier. This is something you gotta see.

The heron took off. Wings as big as eagle wings. Maybe six feet across. Big enough to lift that long-legged, long-necked bird with no effort.

He banked away from me and headed someplace along the shore to hunt in privacy. But he’d stayed for a while. He made his point, and now it was okay to leave.

I was running late. I needed to get a move on. But my dog looked glum as I passed her on the way out. She’d been having a tough time lately, getting old. I figured I should give her some time. Okay, two minutes.

I got on the floor. Talked to her. Rubbed her neck. She seemed down. Ah, what the hell. How ‘bout a walk? Just a quick one. I got the leash. Her eyes got a light in them. She struggled to stand. She was up for it.

It was a nice day. We made it to the corner and instead of heading back, we kept going. One more block. It’s May and the greenery was looking good. My dog sniffed around and seemed happy for a change. A bird flew past and landed high in a tree.

I noticed.

It was a bright, unusual bird. There are plenty of birds on our street, mostly Robins, Grackles, House Finches, but this was different. It was a bird I try to see every year around this time, but sometimes I don’t.

What kind? That’s not the point. In any case, I’ve mentioned this bird’s name before, and done it a little too much. Anyone who’s familiar with the stories on this website might say: not again.

But it happened, this sighting. I had the passing thought that next time I walk the dog I should bring binoculars. Then I figured: no way. If I bring binoculars I probably won’t see anything. Better to just go with the flow.

Besides, this wasn’t about a bird. This was about a dog.

Two-fisted bird watchers are for real. Yeah, you. You’re part of a group that gets out into the world. You go where the wild goose goes, as the cowboy song says.

Today we heard from a guy who visits this site from time to time. He’s exploring Asia. He found an internet hookup outside Shanghai and sent a message. I pictured him in that faraway place looking at people, birds, maybe some shaggy Bactrian camels, and clouds in a Chinese sky.

(I notice clouds when I travel. On a St. Petersburg park bench where I’d been watching Hooded Crows I leaned back, looked up and said to my wife: Just think, those are Russian clouds. She looked at me funny. Nothing new in that).

Last year we emailed a guy to tell him he won a sweatshirt. He lived in Alaska, which in itself is a two-fisted thing to do. Then he wrote back saying that he was leaving next morning for a months-long research expedition to study birds in the steamy wilds of Borneo. He figured the sweatshirt would be useful when he came home.

We heard from a woman who rehabs raptors, owls, vultures. She’s the owner of a handful of scars and the author of a pretty good book. We’ve heard from guys who explore Amazon jungles and find new species. One guy wrote us about Magellan Penguins that he saw when visiting Puerto Madryn in Patagonia.

We hear from swamp explorers in southern bayous, desert hikers in Arizona, mountain climbers, beach combers and science geeks who spend way more time in the wild than they do in a lab, ala Indiana Jones.

The two-fisted birdwatcher is no fictional figure; no wannabe. He or she is out there, getting bug-bit and windblown, seeing birds and other wild things and knowing their names. Hey, that’s you.

People are out of work. Companies have closed. And companies that haven’t closed have gotten smaller. But life in the woods is the same. Business has no business here.

I’m walking along and see a Blue Jay. This eastern jay is big, colorful and has a two-fisted attitude. But don’t call the hot-line. I’ve seen Blue Jays a thousand times. They’re common.

Wait a second. Not so fast.

Jays have been rare in the last few years. They’ve been out of work. Laid off. Let go. Retired. Fired. Downsized. Not by the economy, but by a mosquito with West Nile Virus.

West Nile: exotic words. They recall adventurous places and giant crocodiles. The word “virus” is not so interesting. It’s a word, and a thing, we could do without. Even my computer thinks so.

Blue Jays got hit hard by West Nile Virus. You’d walk the trails where Jays used to be, and there’d be no sign. Crows were decimated, too. And some people got sick.

The virus is old news now. And the dip it caused in bird population is old news, too. But the new news is that after a couple of years, Blue Jays, and Crows too, are showing up again.

In any downturn, there are natural immunities. And some individuals just take the hit and get through it. They find their way back.

I saw this Blue Jay today and thought about business. I didn’t want to bring thoughts of economics and unemployment into the uncivilized woods. But the parallel was noticeable.

The Blue Jay got downsized and disappeared. But now this tough bird’s back. And he’s not alone. Recovery happens.

Things will probably work out that way for the people I know who were let go, and for companies who are against the ropes. This stuff passes. Meantime, it’s spring and the woods are full of birds.

It’s hard to write upbeat stuff about warblers in clean Midwestern woodlands when you’ve got a blob of sludge the size of Puerto Rico heading for coastal zones along the gulf states and all around Florida.

Those steamy sunny places are where I’ve done some of the best bird watching of my life. I’ve seen Willets and Sanderlings in so many numbers they became junk sightings. I know they’re possible on Lake Michigan beaches but I almost never see them up here.

Down on the warm gulf I’ve seen Frigate Birds, Laughing and Bonaparte’s Gulls, Brown Pelicans flying low in single file, Anhingas, ducks, egrets and herons of all makes and models; ibises that look like they escaped from a zoo but didn’t.

I saw a Purple Gallinule one time—that was something to remember—countless sandpipers, and my favorite Ruddy Turnstones. I’ve taken for granted that there would be beaches with Common Terns, Least Terns, Caspian Terns. The list goes on. And it’s not a life list. It’s the freakin’ opposite.

Yeah, sure, the problems that the gulf oil slick might present for birds and other wildlife are only part of a multi-dimensional story. There’s the human cost. And the fishery story, the possible devastation of an industry. The blob of runaway oil could muck up a big chunk of the natural world if it’s not contained, and the unnatural world, too.

Even though we live up north, we’re watching what’s going on down there. We don’t know how the story’s going to end. Or when. But in the meantime, the spring warbler situation around here seems kind of trivial at the moment, and it’s going to have to play itself out without much commentary from us.

The woman across the street died suddenly. I wish I’d known her better, but our acquaintance was casual. I do remember that she was an adventurous traveler.

She and her husband had been to jungles, deserts and mountains. She’d rafted the Amazon. Trekked the Himalayas. Maybe she climbed Everest; I think there was some talk about that. I wish I’d listened better.

I saw the movie “Amelia” recently, and the actress who played Amelia Earhart, Hilary Swank, was tall and pretty, with a no-nonsense hairstyle and great smile. Like the real Earhart. Like my neighbor.

Earhart’s similarity to my neighbor extended beyond appearance. It included her adventurous spirit. I don’t know if Earhart was kind and personable, but our neighbor was.

When my wife got the news by phone she paled, and after hanging up, told me in a hushed voice about our neighborhood’s loss.

My first reaction, after a few expletives, was, “Hell, she explored Tibet.” As though I were saying: No, can’t be true; the woman once walked in the Himalayas, must be some mistake.

I guess I felt that a youthful, strong Himalayan explorer would live forever. Nothing about what I felt made sense. But then my wife said something that did.

“I’m glad she explored Tibet!”

This hit home, rang true, felt right, even offered a bit of solace. My wife communicated volumes in five words, and they made a pretty good eulogy, spoken privately and in shock.

What they meant was this: we can’t be sure how long we’ll be around, so those of us who are smart get out into the world and do things. Like see the Amazon and climb the Himalayas.

On Loren Eiseley’s headstone it says: “We loved the earth but could not stay.”

This statement applies to all of us, sorry to say. But at least our neighbor, the nice woman across the street got to see the earth. She climbed mountains in Tibet. We’ll miss her, but she didn’t miss much.

It’s not a chrome-dome. It doesn’t have a comb-over. It doesn’t have a thinning patch, receding hairline or bald spot. Get rid of the word “bald” altogether.

How did our Bald Eagles get such a stupid name? The science nerds who care about arcane things like bird taxonomy, and are picky about picking names, have blown it.

These guys changed the Baltimore Oriole to the Northern Oriole. Okay, they’ve got reasons. They changed the Marsh Hawk to the Northern Harrier even though Northern Harriers can live in Florida.

They changed the Rufous-sided Towhee, the Myrtle Warbler, and others. We’re not going to reopen that can. Two-fisted fans of this site have encountered similar rants. We’ll move on.

But the eagle thing is just plain wrong.

I was at Yellowstone Lake a while back on a bright, cold, clean morning with mountains in the distance, wild forest in the background. Inland pelicans and the promise of bears. A cool moment.

Very American. Purple mountains and all that. You could use it for a travel poster. Europeans would drop their tiny coffee cups and head for the airport. Yellowstone!

As though on cue, while I was thinking these American thoughts, a Bald Eagle flew by, low and slow. A great American moment. His thick, white head feathers lifted in the breeze and ruffled as he flew. That eagle wasn’t bald.

Call it the white-headed eagle if you want. Call it the snow-capped eagle, I don’t care. Yeah, I know, the word “bald” has linguistic derivations that go beyond the common meaning today by which someone like, say, George Costanza or Terry Bradshaw might be described.

It’s from “balled” in old or middle English and meant white and shiny. Well, balled has meant other things in my neighborhood. But all this is beside the point. The eagle I saw wasn’t bald. No Bald Eagle is bald. Its name’s a bald-faced lie.

Somebody oughta tell a taxonomist.

Footnote and afterthought: By the way, “taxonomist” is not such a hot word either. It means “classifier of biological names.” But there are plenty of yo-yos around who think it means taxidermist. Which is a guy who stuffs dead animals, puts plastic eyes in their heads and makes them into creepy displays. Or trophies. Or both.

It’s cold and windy in the woods. I’m on the planet of no birds. There’s nothing. It’s early in the season, so this isn’t too surprising.

But it’s curious that I’ve been seeing pictures of migrants on ambitious birding websites. Brown Thrashers, Eastern Meadowlarks, Red-headed Woodpeckers. Some guy even got a picture of a Scarlet Tanager. How can that be; it’s only April.

But my woods are bleak. There’s a visitor’s cabin near the parking area, and the rangers who work there have feeders out back. Seeds, suet, fruit. There must be birds there. But, damnit, I’m not going near the place.

I have this thing about feeders. They’re one step above going to a zoo. Why not visit the bird house and get excited about Flamingos? No way. The feeder’s unsatisfying, a kind of cheating.

So I stay away. As I walk the empty trail, I wonder why I’m here. Two reasons: One, after a day in an office it’s good to get into the wild. Two, I try to put some “daily sightings” on this website. I’m here for both of us. You, me. If I strike out, I’m sorry.

Near an open field, I see something eye-catching in the weeds. Man-made, small, flat, greenish. Money? It’s a five dollar bill, I think.

Then I get closer and discover it’s not the real deal, just an old coupon for a pizza restaurant, a piece of paper shaped and patterned like a fiver. I put it in my pocket to throw away later, and head out of the woods.

As I walk, I’m imagining that every bird in the county must be at the feeder behind the cabin. They must be in the trees above it and on the ground around it. All species, sizes and colors. Common and rare.

I’ve seen no birds on the trail where I walked, and have no five bucks, either. But the air was good to breathe, the feel of the office is now gone, and I’m ready to hike back to the car, back to whatever’s next.

I never went near the feeder. A moral victory of sorts. I don’t care for zoos and don’t count on feeders. When I tell you about a bird, I’d rather that it not be eating out of human hands. I’d rather it be a sighting in the wild, the real deal.

What could be better than a Cubs game in April at Wrigley Field. You need two fists just to hold the hot dogs and beers.

You like the outdoors? There’s nothing like the view that hits you when you enter Wrigley. The green infield and outfield. The vines. The sky. The charge in the air.

Wait, isn’t this supposed to be about birds?

Well, sometimes you get Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays. But sometimes, you settle for Houston Astros. Which isn’t bad when they lose.

So there you are: a two-fisted bird watcher at Wrigley, enjoying the sun, the wild crowd, John Cusack singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch. This is so corny it’s cool.

While you’re watching the game, and eating nachos, and while Mike Fontenot is getting walked because he’s dangerous, and while big Derrek Lee (D. Lee as he’s called around here), is coming up, while all this is going on…you see a gull over the field.

Hmmm. What kind? Wait, no. Who cares.

You care what kind of pitch Lee’s going to get. You care about not spilling nachos when everybody stands. You don’t care about no stinkin’ gull.

But you gotta wonder: the gull’s wings are unusually wide. And skinny. Like those of an Albatross. You think, hey, Albatross. Not a bad symbol for this place. The Cubs have a curse because they haven’t won a world series in like a hundred years. So Albatross might fit. It’s a curse bird, right out of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a two-fisted poem.

Enough. Albatrosses aren’t in Chicago. If they are, notify Illinois Birders’ Forum right away. And poems aren’t mentioned at Cubs games. Let’s move on.

But then you remember that the Albatross is known as the “Gooney Bird,” a great name. And appropriate at the moment, because there are gooney birds behind you, rooting for the Astros.

Suddenly……none of this matters!

The musings about the gull, the albatross, the gooney guys behind you, the nachos that will fall, none of it, because Lee connects on a low & outside slider with a sound that means homer. The ball goes out of the park, onto Waveland Avenue. A Wrigley moment, a game winner, a 3-run blast. And that’s all that matters.

But as you shuffle out of Wrigley after the game while 40,000 people are singing “Go Cubs Go,” you think: It was a Herring Gull. Could’ve been a Ring-billed Gull. But no, too big, it was a Herring Gull.

And you figure that just thinking this thought at this moment makes you kind of a gooney bird yourself. But who cares. Cubs win!

I pull into the parking lot of a forest preserve. Kill the motor, grab binoculars from the back seat and get ready to leave the car.

Nearby, a car is backing out of a space that’s marked with diagonal lines. An illegal space. Illegal, because it’s in front of a garbage can.

As the car pulls out, a guy with a digi-scope walks past. A serious birder. He notices that the space wasn’t legal and glowers at the driver. Then, looking down, shakes his head.

The guy in the car stops backing up. Suddenly. Through his open window, he says to digi-scope, “Got a problem, sport?” Digi-scope shakes his head again, as though to say, “what a jerk.”

The driver leaves his car now. Digi-scope turns and says, “Unless you want this scope up your ass, keep moving. And learn where to park.”

There was a bit more muttering, but digi-scope kept walking and the guy in the car drove away. That was a scene more suited to a barroom than a forest preserve. Since when do bird watchers behave like this?

Then a thought hit: Could it be the “two-fisted” image? Could it be the stuff we write about here? Could it be our attitude? Are we changing the way birders behave?

Ah, get real. Those guys probably never heard of the website. I left the parking lot, went into the woods and saw birds, but I always see birds. My real sighting of the day was a couple of bozos with fists ready to fly.

Later, on the trail I walked past digi-scope and we nodded. I thought I saw a two-fisted birdwatcher logo on the guy’s T-shirt, peeking out from under his vest. But maybe it was my imagination.

I’m on a trail. Far into the forest. It’s isolated. Nothing but trees, deadfall, undergrowth, mud, gravel, dead leaves. The trees don’t care I’m there. Their indifference is welcome. They expect nothing.

Then I see a guy walking up the trail toward me. I see him when he’s far away, and as he gets closer we look at each other. When we’re close enough to speak, he expects something. He expects me to say “hi,” and of course I do. And he says “hi,” this stranger.

Such greetings are built into the culture of the trail.

But it got me thinking: When we’re out of the woods, out in the man-made world, on the streets of the city, in the malls, in the halls of office buildings, guys are passing by, all the time. And of course we never nod and say hi.

It’s the culture of the cultured world to keep our own company and pretty much ignore those we don’t know. But in the woods, we say “hi.” It’s unthinkable not to.

I wondered about that today as I walked in the woods and passed that stranger. I have no answer for why this is the way it is. It feels right, though. I’m not going to think about it any more.

In addition to the guy, who was unremarkable, I saw a Hairy Woodpecker with a long beak and red on his head, very bright in the sun. I saw a Brown Creeper and a Swainson’s Thrush. I saw other birds, too, but my time in the woods wasn’t really about birding.

It was about being in the woods, being absorbed into the cold wildness, being somewhere that wasn’t man-made for an hour or so. I guess I didn’t really mind running into a guy and nodding and saying “hi,” but I’d have liked it just as well if he hadn’t come along.

You’re in the gravel parking area where the trail starts. It’s cloudy, threatening. You hike toward the river, a mile away. No others in sight. You’ve got the woods to yourself.

Then it starts to rain. Turn back? Hell no. This is where you want to be. So what if it’s wet. So what if you’re wet.

You see a Rufous-sided Towhee on the ground. This bird is now called the Eastern Towhee. You dislike name-changing. But in fairness you grudgingly admit that it always felt dweeby to say “rufous-sided.”

Then you see a bird you didn’t expect. An American Redstart, actually a couple: the orange and black male and his yellow and brown female. You move on. Heading to the river.

Down there you see a Northern Waterthrush, or maybe it’s a Louisiana Waterthrush. They look alike. You’ll figure it out later with a birdbook. But you think it’s a Louisiana Waterthrush, and you’ll be right.

Then you see an Ovenbird. No doubt. Stripes and color on the head. It lets you look. There are Palm Warblers all over. And a Wilson’s Warbler that’s there and gone. You stand near the river. The leaves act like an umbrella.

You see a Green Heron along the far bank. Orange legs, red-brown body. Maybe some green on the back, but not much. You wonder why they named him a Green Heron. You try to think of a better name, but a beaver waddles across the trail.

You forget about heron names. This dark brown animal is big, the size of a chocolate lab. But round. You’ve been seeing gashes in trees along the river, bare white wood where these animals chewed. Chips on the ground.

The beaver slips into the river. Its wake reminds you of a submarine. This was a first: everyone notices beaver sign but nobody sees a beaver. They’re shy. Maybe on this rainy day he counted on privacy.

You hear woodpeckers but don’t see them. Another thing you don’t see is people. Maybe that’s why the day’s interesting. Wildlife lays low if people are around.

The redstarts are thinking: what’s wrong with that guy…doesn’t he have the sense to get out of the rain? They might have a point. You leave the woods. But not because you have sense. You stayed because you had sense. And you saw a beaver.

Two seconds. That’s all it takes. At the trailhead you get a feel for what’s in the woods, what you’re going to see. You know it’s going to be active. Or quiet.

Today was warm. I figured there’d be a lot of birds in the trees. Early migrants. Excited residents. Activity.

The trees were dead. No sound. No movement. Nothing. If I walked for an hour it would be the same story. I walked anyway. It’s good to be in the woods.

And I thought, it’s funny how you know right away. Like when you size up a person. You like the guy or trust the girl. Your first impression is right. There’s a book about this called “Blink” by Malcom Gladwell. But we’re not here to talk about books.

We’re here to share a simple idea: Maybe birds come in schools.

Like fish. When snorkeling in the ocean you see areas of blank water, then clusters of fish. Schools. Maybe it’s like that with birds.

Maybe a school drops into my patch of woodland. Or it doesn’t. On days when it does, I see birds. All kinds. On days when the school passes by, the woods are quiet.

An unusual thought. Unscientific maybe. So what. It’s just a wild idea. But it works. Sometimes there’s nothing much to see, and sometimes there is.

As an aside, on this warm day of no activity I did see one unexpected, out-of-place bird. A Double-crested Cormorant, flying fast with jerky wings. It didn’t belong around here. Yeah, there’s a river not far, but cormorants are rare.

Even on slow days, there’s usually something to see. Like this odd duck. This odd cormorant. Cutting class, maybe. Because school was clearly not in session.

People ask me for tips about bird watching. I’m no expert. But I’ve seen birds in a few places. And I write about them. So I get these questions.

Today, out in wild country near my home, a place of old forest, meadow and more forest, I got a simple idea.

I realized that there’s a tip I could give people about bird watching. I know a place where I always see more birds than any other place.

It’s the edge. The edge of the forest. Or the edge of the meadow. Depending on how you look at it.

This is the spot where the woods butt up against a clearing. It’s a pretty clear-cut line. On one side, there’s shady forest. And on the other, there’s sunny open area, a place with groundhogs, snakes and dragonflies; short grass, long grass.

The birds that hang out in the deep, cool woods come to the edge to get a glimpse of what’s going on in the sun, I guess. There are new bugs to eat there, fresh air to breathe, a little creek with water to drink. Birds of the forest are not as likely to be seen deep in the forest as they are on its edges.

And birds of the open areas, sparrows, kingbirds, goldfinches, swallows, species that like meadows and prairies are also drawn to the edge. There’s a whole other selection of bugs there, the kind that seek shade, like mosquitoes and black flies.

At the edge, you’ll get to see both forest birds and field birds. Go stand there. Just wait. They’ll come around. That’s my advice. You want the best chance to see some birds? Remember what I said. It’ll give you an edge.

I walk in the woods when I can. They’re different from other places in my world. They’re old, rough, wild, natural. I used to think they were timeless. But I was wrong about that. They’re not timeless at all. How do I know? A little bird told me.

A Ruby-crowned Kinglet. The trees were full of these very small birds today. Might’ve been Golden-crowned Kinglets mixed in. I see them around this time of year, every year. Late March. Early April. Kinglet season. You can set your watch by it.

And the woods have Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers now. Some live around here, but many travel through, and we see them in early April.

The woods are not timeless. They’re a giant timepiece. Wildflowers are coming through dead leaves and patches of snow now. I don’t know their names, but they show up on cue.

And there’s that thrush, a Swainson’s Thrush. Every time I see one, and I see them this time of year, I figure I’d rather see a Wood Thrush, with its rust color and bolder spots. But we get Swainson’s Thrushes like clockwork.

In a few weeks warblers come through. The earliest can be seen any time now: Myrtle Warblers. I know their name’s been changed to something else (Yellow-rumped), but I like to resist the movement of time and the changing of names that goes with it.

In a few weeks we get the colorful birds, orioles, tanagers, buntings, grosbeaks. We’ll hear them, we’ll see them, we’ll stop wearing sweaters. We’ll be another year older.

That’s okay. It’s all okay. Older is wiser. But it wasn’t wise to think that the woods are a place where time would stand still. What a joke. They’re a big, breathing calendar and they rub your face in the passage of time. Might as well enjoy it.

Okay, we all know that computer art programs can alter reality. We’ve seen Avatar. Anything’s possible.

So we’d like to think we’re cool enough to resist the reaction we had when our friend Pandy sent us these photos. But the reaction we couldn’t stop was to say: What the hell!

These shots and others like them are floating around the internet, and we make no claim to originality here. But in case you haven’t seen them, we thought you’d want to take a look.

They’ve been created by a website called “Worth 1000,” and there are lots of manipulated photos there. Check it out if you’re interested.

Meanwhile, what kind of birds would you call these? Fox Cardinal? Jayhound? Warbling Retriever? Got better ideas?