I shake snow off my coat and get in an elevator. I’m in a city building. Couldn’t be avoided. No woodland walks today, no bird sightings likely. Or so I thought.

Before the doors close a young woman hops in. She’s smiling and says “happy new year.” We don’t know each other, but the season’s got her in a good mood.

She’s wearing a jacket with drawings of Disney characters all over it. It’s cheerful. Like she is. But this doesn’t change things. We’re indoors, and the elevator grinds along.

I notice her jacket has a Disney bluebird on the shoulder. This makes me smile in spite of myself. I remember the old song, “There’s a bluebird on my shoulder” from a long-ago cartoon. That’s a mood improver.

Yeah, but the bird guy in me wonders: what kind of bluebird? There’s no species with that single name. This is of no real importance. It’s just a song from a cartoon. Still, it was something to think about while standing in a slow-moving elevator.

I figure it’s gotta be a Mountain Bluebird. The colors are right. But it could be an Eastern Bluebird. Maybe a Western Bluebird. Then, out of the blue comes the slight possibility that it’s an Indigo Bunting. Can’t rule out a Lazuli Bunting.

Or a Blue Grosbeak, Blue Jay, Scrub Jay. What about a Steller’s Jay? How about those blue tanagers from South America. There are blue birds in the tropics, Europe, Africa, everywhere. In Eurasia, even the kingfishers are blue.

So when the cheerful old song goes, “…there’s a bluebird on my shoulder,” it might be okay musically but it’s vague ornithologically. And who cares! The bluebird can be anything or nothing; it’s just a cartoon.

But thinking about it made the elevator ride a little easier to take. I get out at my stop and say happy new year to the woman in the Disney jacket. Zip-a-dee doo-dah.

It was a winter much like this one.

I’m in a snow-covered meadow at the edge of the woods. The snow’s up to my knees. Slogging in was slow work, but fun. My stamina was good. And I was safely within sight of a distant farm. No problem. Or so I thought.

In low bushes there were Pine Siskins, streaky brown with spots of yellow. I’d seen Blue Jays, a tree full of Cedar Waxwings. Dark-eyed Juncos with white tail feathers flashing. These birds were not rare, but it was good to count them and count on them.

I saw a Red-bellied Woodpecker up ahead but didn’t want to walk further. This woodpecker is just as likely outside my kitchen window, and I was getting tired.

Then I saw a hefty purple bird. Could it be a Crossbill? A White-Winged Crossbill? That’s something I’ve never seen, with its screwy beak. I headed after it. The sun was going down, but I could still see the farm across the snowy meadow. So why not?.

I was getting out of breath as I pushed through the snow, but had to check out the Crossbill. The nearer I got, the further it flew. I never got close enough to nail the sighting. Then I got really tired. I’m outta here, I figured. I began to cut across the field toward the farm. Shortest distance between two points, right?

My boots are packed with snow. My legs burn. My lungs hurt. I start to think that I might not make it. Don’t panic. Breathe. Take one step at a time. The snow’s thigh-high but I’m moving. Suddenly it gets easier because the ground is firmer. No more grassy stubble under the snow. A smooth floor. Cool.

Then I feel it sag slightly. I think…wasn’t there a pond here? I remember a pond last summer. I’m on ice. And it’s cracking. I freeze. Then slowly backtrack, until I feel grass under my feet again.

Made it. But did I? I’m still in deep, no cell phone, no people. It’s getting dark and I’m totally out of gas. I sit. My butt’s in the snow. I lie back, sucking air that’s heavy with cold. Moisture on my eyes feels crisp, turning icy as I blink.

So how does this end? The only way: I force myself to move. I inch along the treeline where there’s no ice, avoiding the straight-line-to-the-farm idea. Step by step, I get out. Once the clutch of unease passed, it wasn’t impossible.

I even went back the next day looking for the Crossbill but didn’t see it. Six months later I saw a Yellow-billed Cuckoo there, a bird that has become rare in our area. I thought: last winter there was a cuckoo on the same spot.

Even when you’re out of town, out of the woods and out of the ordinary, the sharpened senses of a two-fisted bird watcher aren’t entirely out of business.

For example, in the concrete and brick wilderness of New York City, in the narrow streets of the neighborhood they call Greenwich Village—which is no village of course—even there, you can see a bird or two. And the two birds are these: House Sparrow and Rock Dove, more commonly known as pigeon or rat-with-wings. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting sightings.

A city guy is walking his dog on a treeless, grassless Greenwich Village street. This is the dog’s idea of being out in nature. But who are we to say he doesn’t like it. The man, with leash in one hand and baggie in the other, is strolling along when his dog stops short to look at a sparrow that’s picking at crumbs near a garbage can. One female House Sparrow. The dog’s fascinated. He strains at the leash and wants to scope out the bird, sniff the bird, eat the bird. The guy with the baggie waits.

The bird doesn’t like the dog’s attention and hops to the other side of the garbage can. The dog noses over to that side, so the sparrow hops to the opposite side. They continue this little dance. The sparrow doesn’t fly off; maybe it’s tired, maybe it wants to stay where the crumbs are. The dog can’t get close because the bird keeps the can between them.

Hey, we’ve got a sighting. Not the House Sparrow so much. It’s the dog. He’s more interesting than this common bird. He’s got his ears up, on full alert. He’s a muscular pooch, white with brown spots, a short coat, high forehead and long snout, an intelligent face. No pedigreed breed, just a mutt, but clever, and engaged by the strange sight of a bird on concrete. He’s got to see what it is.

This dog’s a four-fisted birdwatcher, with his rounded, bunched up big paws. He’s straining at the leash. The bird’s giving him nothing. But he keeps trying, out there on the street in a world of pavement and garbage cans. He’s all eyes and ears and into bird watching, taking whatever he can get.

The Christmas Bird Count is in full swing, and we’re doing more than counting birds. We’re counting birders. People like you, who have found your way to the Two-Fisted Birdwatcher.

We understand that if you’re looking for deep ornithology, photo galleries or research, there are better websites out there than this one. Ours is just a site that offers a few words from the point of view of a guy who appreciates birding and who also appreciates people like you.

Putting a site on the web is like putting seeds and suet around back of the house. You check to see if it’s been noticed. When you get some visitors out there, you feel good about it. That’s why we feel good about you. You’re our “sighting of the day.”

But before we go further with that thought, we have to tell you that we did see a few interesting things in the woods earlier. Like heron tracks in the snow. No heron, but the big guy must’ve been there, down by the river. His prints we’re unmistakable. And we saw—unexpectedly—a Turkey Vulture. Late December’s a cold time of year for this bird, but he was wheeling above the woods on big, black and gray wings, looking down. Maybe looking for a frozen heron to eat.

Anyway, as we said, our sighting of the day is you. During the Christmas season birders are into counting. The population of some birds might be wavering downward—at least that’s been our disappointed observation—but the population of birders seems stronger than ever.

So here’s a two-fisted thumbs up to you!  Thanks for counting birds out there in the cold this Christmas. And thanks for coming around to read our words. Hope you have happy holidays and a happy new year.

Sighting of the day. The birds of Avatar. If you don’t know what Avatar is, you’ve got to get out more.

And you’ve got to see this movie. It’s made for you, you two-fisted bird watcher, you. Because it’s filled with wild creatures who fly. Are they birds? Good question. My answer: yeah! I think of them as birds.

And they’re worth sighting. Worth adding to your life list. Some people might think of them as sci-fi dragons. I guess they’re called Banshees in the film, if you want to get technical about it. Doesn’t matter. They’re birds.

Birds descended from dinosaurs on our planet, and on the planet in Avatar the flying creatures look like birds that descended from dinosaurs. Alien dinosaurs maybe, but with all the right equipment. Beaks and wings and talons, and they can fly like hell. That’s really what it’s all about.

Bird watchers, two-fisted bird watchers, gotta admit that they wouldn’t care much about birds if birds didn’t fly. Flying is the best thing an animal can do.

We want to fly; always have. Fly on big wings like those of an eagle or heron. Fly in soaring circles like vultures. Fly in acrobatic loops like swallows or gulls. Or fly silently like a stealth predator—in other words, an owl. But the main thing is—fly.

Bird watchers like to watch flying. And wish we could do it. Well, in Avatar you get to see a lot of bird-like flying, soaring, zooming, and you get to ride along on the backs of the birds as they do it. Definitely, the sighting of the day. And the bird watcher’s movie of the year. Maybe the bird watcher’s movie of a lifetime.

What I mean by “bird dropping” is the ornithological version of name dropping. You hear it when you run into committed birders. It’s not their fault. If a guy sees a Hudsonian Godwit, what’s he supposed to say? But still, there’s that smack of bird dropping. It’s unavoidable.

Well, I’ve got a bird to drop. But I’ve been keeping it in reserve for some day when I feel the need to drop it. Ah, skip that. I’m not into bird dropping; I’ll mention it in a moment.

But before I do, another example comes to mind: Last May I was in the woods looking up at a Scarlet Tanager. Not an uncommon bird, but its two-tone coloration interests me. A bird guru with a long lens came hiking into my space, and asked me what I was looking at. He shrugged off the sighting, saying that a Summer Tanager would have been more worth spotting. One had been rumored to be around, and that’s what he assumed I was looking for. The Scarlet Tanager was beneath his interest.

Summer Tanager. A good name to bird-drop. But not as good as the one I’ve been saving. Here goes: Phainopepla. That’s right, Phainopepla. Ever see one? Ever hear of one? I saw this fairly uncommon black-crested flycatcher in Arizona. They’re from a Central American group of birds, but some are found in a wedge of territory near the Sonoran Desert.

At first I thought it was a Steller’s Jay. Those western Jays can be dark. Then I realized, wait, it’s all black, no blue. And the crest is wispy. Also, the bird was skinnier than a Jay. When it flew, I thought I saw white patches on its wings, like the wings of a Mockingbird. This was a pretty rare bird.

I needed a field guide to be sure, and there it was. Phainopepla. What a great, unusual name. Most people I know have never seen a Phainopepla. Most people can’t even pronounce it. I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it right. People hear “Phainopepla” and they don’t know you’re talking about a bird. It sounds like a stomach disorder.

If you want to be a bird dropper, you come back from a walk somewhere in Arizona and say, yeah, I saw some Abert’s Towhees today (not “towhees,” but “Abert’s Towhees”) and, oh yeah, a Phainopepla.

If you get a blank stare, that makes the bird dropping all the better. If you’re talking to a knowledgeable birder you might get a jealous stare. Phainopeplas, like Hudsonian Godwits aren’t everyday occurances. And speaking of towhees, what about the Inyo California Towhee? Ever see one of those? Okay, no more bird dropping for today. It can get messy.

Some people don’t know that the word “coot” is a bird’s name. Yeah, the American Coot, I tell them. People shrug. They still think a coot’s an old guy, whether he’s an American or not.

American Coots are duck-like birds that aren’t ducks. You see them near ponds and rivers around here. Sometimes coots stay in winter if the water’s not frozen. I saw one recently in the woods. It was a strange sighting, gory yet bloodless.

I was bushwhacking in a preserve that had a pond at its center. Nothing much happening by the water. So I moved into the adjoining old-growth woods. I saw a Red-breasted Nuthatch right away and followed it. This is less common than the White-breasted. It played with me by always staying on the opposite side of any tree. Still, I got a glimpse.

Last year, I’d seen a fox run into a hole near here. I remembered that Native Americans sometimes named places for memorable sightings, and thought that the spot where I stood could be called “place of the fox.”

My thoughts were interrupted by the loud tapping of a woodpecker. I looked up and didn’t see it, but did catch the quick, quiet departure of a Red-tailed Hawk from its place in a tall tree. On the ground near that tree I saw an American Coot. I walked over, wondering if it would fly off, and also wondering why it was in the woods, away from the pond.

It was dead. And only half there, the top half. Neat black feathers. Intact head. Wings that seemed like they could work. An unruffled bird. Except, no bottom. Like those victims of shark attacks that float after a shipwreck, looking like survivors until you tip them over and there’s nothing from the waist down.

I picked up the half-coot. You could plop it onto your head as a hat. A hollow coot. I guess the guts had been eaten and the blood had dried. The hawk must have caught the coot near the pond and brought it into the trees for a meal. I was looking at leftovers.

Didn’t see much else on my way out. The Red-breasted Nuthatch was still hiding on the opposite sides of trees. I left the woods and walked near the pond. There were lots of Mallards there, and a bunch of American Coots. Enough for several meals, I thought, in the place of the fox.

I like birding in winter. The colder the better. It’s bracing. And there are no bugs. Trouble is, there are no birds. Well, not entirely. There are birds. But they’re the same most days. On the unfrozen parts of the river in the woods near my home there’s the breed of urban Canada Geese we get, and they might migrate if forced, but we usually see them through the winter. There are sparrows and winter-versions of American Goldfinches that look like sparrows. And Dark-eyed Juncos, etc. I’m hoping for a Snowy Owl, but usually strike out.

This is winter birding, and it’s not the subject of today’s sighting. Instead, the subject is the Bananaquit. Go ahead. Say it: Bananaquit. Fun, huh?

I generally have trouble with bird names because they can be goofy. Like “Pied-billed Grebe,” or any “grebe.” Grebe? C’mon. There’s “Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.” You don’t want to say that. And what about “Tufted Titmouse?”

Maybe Bananaquit overlaps into this category of idiosyncratic birdy-sounding names. I prefer two-fisted names like “Raven,” “Robin,” “Crow,” and “Barn Owl.” “Eagle” is good. But when you put “Bald” or “Golden” in front of it, you feel a little too picky. Anyway, why are we talking about Bananaquits?

Because it’s freezing! Bird sightings are few. And when I stand in the cold my mind wanders back to a rain forest on a hillside in Jamaica where I saw a Bananaquit. I’m not real conversant with tropical birds, but there’s a side of me that remembers what I’ve seen in bird books. This is inexplicable; I’m usually not good with book lore.

But as soon as this yellow and black, plump and hyper little bird showed up, I said “Bananaquit.” I don’t know how it got its name, but there were banana trees in its range. I don’t see the connection, and I’m not going to research it. I do know there are other birds with the “quit” suffix in their names. Maybe somebody out there can explain what it means.

Bananaquit. It does roll off the tongue. Even if you’re only saying it in your mind. And it takes your mind off the cold, transports you to the jungle with its bird song, insect hum, trees, vines and flowers, happy shirtless people, hummingbirds of all kinds, even rare hummingbirds with great long tails that stream behind. Saw one of them, too. The Jamaicans call it “Doctor Bird” and it’s something of a national symbol there.

But that’s another story. The story for now is, a half-frozen guy at a half-frozen river in the the Midwest, with no birds to report. But a Bananaquit to think about.

I’m checking out the freezing woods on a record cold day in the north Chicago burbs. It snowed several inches yesterday and now the cold has set in. Single digits. Below zero wind chill, whatever the hell that means. And it’s a black and white world. Why am I nosing around in it? Well, I said I’d try to find a daily sighting as often as I could and put the results on this blog. So I’m looking in the woods.

I say the world here is black and white because there’s snow everywhere and where there isn’t snow there are trees and bushes. These have bare branches that are so dark brown on this cloudy day that they might as well be black. Black and white. Actually, kind of nice looking, like an art photo.

But if there’s any bird life to report, I’m not seeing it. Then, as though on cue, there are four cardinals in a bush. They don’t fly away as I approach. They’re cold, and there are berries on the bush, freeze-dried berries, but better than nothing I guess. So these birds stay. Two males, two females. A double date. And the males are so wildly out of place from the standpoint of color, that I stop and stare.

I’ve seen a million cardinals. They’re nothing to write home about. Except, at this moment, in this place, they amaze me. I wonder, why are they red? What evolutionary quirk made them that way? The bright red beak, the red crest, the black cheeks just for fun, and everywhere else, red, pure fire-engine red.

The old joke I never quite understood when I was a kid went: what’s black and white and red all over, and the answer according the grown-ups was a newspaper. As a little guy I didn’t get the pun, the double meaning of red/read. How stupid. Both me and the joke. But it came to me again, there in the woods. What’s black and white and red all over, and I thought: this day, and the male cardinals.

Those were the only birds I saw. I know there must have been others but they were laying low and I wasn’t hanging in there long enough to get frost bitten. Still, the cardinals did the job. They made my daily sighting a colorful one. The only redder thing in the woods was my nose.

Saw a new species today. The Snow-covered Goose. Field markings: White on top, brown on the bottom. See, in the Chicago area, our Canada Geese aren’t much into migrating. Today we’re having a blizzard. So our geese are huddled in large packs on the ground in fields and parking lots. They have a good, deep layer of white wet snow on them, but they don’t seem to mind. Many have their heads tucked under their wings, sleeping, staying warm. Maybe hibernating? The Snow-covered Goose. My species of the day.

By contrast, I also saw what I’m pretty sure is a Crimson-crested Woodpecker. Might not be, but we can talk about that. I kind of like the symmetry of the names…Snow-covered, Crimson-crested. But where do you see a woodpecker in a blizzard? Right here. A friend told us to check out a video of a woodpecker fighting a snake. We hear about odd videos all the time, but it’s a snowy, boring day so we went to this link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9mst2pjqn8

Raises age-old issues about eminent domain, doesn’t it? Usually these disputes are solved by who’s bigger. Although sometimes it’s a matter of who got there first. And about how possession is nine tenths of the law. But this is the law of the jungle. And a warm jungle it is, a good place to visit on a day like today. Was it a Crimson-Crested? Could’ve been a Robust Woodpecker. Both are similar South American species. Meanwhile, up north we’ve got our Snow-covered Geese.

As I pulled into the parking lot outside my suburban office building today I heard a funny noise. Squeaky fan belt? I turned off the engine. The noise increased. I looked up and saw a V-formation, hundreds of large birds heading south. Geese, I guess. Makes sense this time of year.

But these geese must be a different breed from the ones around here. Ours are common as House Sparrows and have nested in this parking lot. We see them all winter. You gotta wonder if our local geese even heard of a V-formation.

The birds passing overhead must be wilder geese following ancient instinct. I remember reading that some Native Americans called this time of year a “cohunk,” from the sound geese made flying over. We say honk; the natives said cohunk. Close enough.

But wait a second. Something feels wrong. Take a second look, man! These can’t be geese. The sound is off. I was hearing chirpy calls, not honks, not cohunks. I got my binoculars from the trunk and figured: there goes my workday schedule, heading south with the birds.

I looked up and got excited. In the binoculars I could see that these were not geese. They were cranes. Hundreds of long-necked, long-legged, wide-winged, wild, noisy and flapping Sandhill Cranes. I stayed in that parking lot a long time, racking up a daily sighting I never expected on this day, in this place.

As I watched, some of the V-formations broke apart. The birds circled and lost altitude. Were they looking for a place to land? There’s a preserve nearby with ponds. Maybe they were eyeballing it. But they drifted generally south. A few ragged strings of V-formation started up again, although most birds stayed disorganized.

Sandhill Cranes. Birds with six-foot wingspans. Heading from northern wilds to southern swamps. Maybe they were slowing down to sightsee as they passed the big city with its cloverleafs and tall buildings. Who knows. But they made me late for work, not that I cared about work at that moment. Hey, Sandhill Cranes. Hundreds of them!

My daily sighting for a bitter cold Saturday in an unusually bleak suburban nature preserve: Coyote scat on the trail. That was it. But I enjoyed my hike because, today, the place had a quiet inactivity that reminded me of authentic wilderness.

I first noticed this deep quiet when visiting the woodlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Along narrow U.S. 2 in the western part of the U.P. near Lake Gogebic, there are endless trees. You could get lost in them forever. There are wolf packs, plenty of bears and almost certainly Eastern cougars. Bald Eagles and Ospreys are pretty common; so are Pileated Woodpeckers.

But when I first hiked around up there, I saw none of them. Ironic. Because in a few acres near Chicago there’s much to be seen. I guess this is easy to explain. In vast wild land, animals can disperse and be scarce.

The impression you get in authentic wilderness, whether it’s the U.P., Yellowstone, Muir Woods in northern California, the Grand Canyon or the Everglades…. is one of ear-shattering quiet, a feeling of “nothing happening.” But if you’re patient, if you wait by a stream and hang around all day, you’ll see wildlife. You’ll get ticks inside your clothes, but that’s the price you pay.

In the U.P. I saw two Bald Eagles working on a nest. I saw porcupines close enough not to touch. And although I never saw bears I did see garbage cans they messed with near my little motel. I saw Pileated Woodpeckers and a red fox that was more silver than red. Foxes near Chicago are just as much fox I guess, but the U.P.’s fox seemed more rugged.

Anyway, today in the cold suburban woods, there was that same “nothing happening” thing going on, the same deep uncompromising quiet. It was like being a thousand miles from home. Felt good and wild. That was worth noting; that was a pretty okay daily sighting.

That, and the coyote scat. I was glad I saw the scat because when my wife asked “what did you see today,” I couldn’t answer, “I didn’t see shit.” Because, I did.

Maybe I’ll see an owl tonight when I walk the dog. Probably not. I’ve seen them silhouetted against the sky in bare trees, but not often. My chances are pretty slim, even though the moon’s full and throws a lot of light. Meanwhile, there’s a Clark’s Nutcracker right in front of me.

It’s on my wall. I remember taking that shot with a long lens. The bird fills the frame, with evergreen branches blurred behind it. Long black bill. Gray and black plumage. In my book, a pretty rare bird. And I found him in a place that’s rare, too, at least for me: The high, snowy Rockies in Colorado. We were on a back trail, seeing Mountain Bluebirds, Steller’s Jays, Gray Jays, Ravens, Magpies; the birding was good. Then, right above me, this Clark’s Nutcracker. Snap. I made an 8×10 and framed it.

On this cold, birdless day in the Chicago suburbs I saw it on my wall for the first time in….I don’t know, years. Funny, it’s right there every day but has become part of the invisible background of life. I don’t see wallpaper, either. Today, the nutcracker jumped off the wall at me. I remembered that day in the Rockies when I took the photo. I’d been hoping to see a mountain lion there. I’d heard they were all over the place. I had seen bighorn sheep, full-curl rams, close up. So I figured almost anything was possible.

I went into a store on the mountain top where tourists buy postcards. I asked the guy behind the counter if there were lions around and he walked me to the back door, opened it and pointed to a rock twenty or thirty yards away. He said, damn, it’s gone. Then he went on to describe how a big mountain lion had been sunning himself there, just that morning. I figured, what a put-on. I laughed at how much of a rube I’d probably seemed to this local tough guy and how obviously he was playing with me. Yeah, yeah, I said.

Still, I walked back to the rock, and in the snow around it there were prints, big lion-size ones with their distinctive pug marks. Maybe the guy had been telling the truth. When I see my photo of the Clark’s Nutcracker I think about almost seeing a mountain lion. This happens every time. Too bad I almost never notice the photo. Except today, when it was my daily sighting.

I didn’t go looking for birds today. Got stuck in an office. At least there was a window. And on the other side of the glass, trees and low bushes. Our corporate campuses are well landscaped.

I was sitting at my desk absorbed in something corporate, and outside my window there was a commotion at the edge of my consciousness. It didn’t fully register. Then there was more. Bits of shadow. And noise. It broke my concentration and I looked.

A bunch of Starlings. No big deal. I went back to my computer. Then the fuss grew and I had to look again. Not just a few intrusive Starlings, but a whole lot. (By the way, that would be a pretty good alternative name for this bird: The Intrusive Starling).

I’m not interested in Starlings. I guess it’s because they’re common, urban, and because they’re an introduced Eurasian species. If the word on the street about them is correct, a hundred were released in New York’s Central Park in the 1890s for no better reason than some guy wanted the birds mentioned by Shakespeare to be here in America. Okay…..

Anyway, the Starlings that were released for Shakespearean reasons multiplied into a troublesome two hundred million or so, and they’re everywhere in the country now. To me, a satisfying sighting is a Pine Grosbeak or Snow Bunting. Starlings are just avian static, I thought.

Back to the window. It was getting more interesting. There were Starlings everywhere. Hitchcock was playing out there, not Shakespeare. The trees and bushes were black with Starlings. For some reason, the birds would rise up as a group and roll around the sky for a moment, then settle back. All, right outside my window.

I thought: Okay, I won’t write off the day as birdless. I see you guys. And I thought, maybe Starlings are worth seeing. Not just for sheer numbers. But because they’re interesting, close up. They were shining in the light, iridescent, and some had bright, whitish spots. Cool birds, after all.

I think I saw some Brewer’s Blackbirds in with them, and definitely some Grackles. I wasn’t sure about the Brewer’s Blackbirds—they’re hard to identify. But I was sure about one thing. I didn’t go to the birds today; they came to me.

Today I saw one of those long-tailed bird-catching hawks again, either a Cooper’s or Sharp-shinned. Anyway, an “accipiter” as it’s called in more formal circles. It zoomed past but I knew it instantly: Accipiter.

This kind of bird always reminds me of a classic psych experiment done in the late 1930s by a guy named Lorenz, and if you’ve heard about it, skip this post. But if you haven’t, it’s kind of interesting.

The guy suspended a cross-shaped cutout over a bunch of newly hatched geese, propelling it as though it were flying. Like a kid’s model airplane. If the cross moved with the long part in the rear, the baby birds got agitated and tried to hide. But if the same cross moved over them backwards, with the long part in front, they were cool.

The cross’s side bars appear as wings. The long part looks like an accipiter’s tail. Danger. But, again, if this same shape moves in the opposite direction, the long part’s in front of the wings and looks like the neck of a goose. No danger.

The goslings’ reaction to this experiment suggested that some responses in animals are hard-wired. Not everything is learned. Instinct exists. Nature versus nurture and all that, with nature coming out on top.

Since that original experiment, there have been attempts to discredit it, and some studies have added varying interpretations. But it’s likely that young birds do in fact have an inborn fear of the predatory silhouette, whether guys in lab coats discovered it or not.

When I see the flash of an accipiter against the sky, I have an instant response, too. I think of the Lorenz experiment, just like I did today.

I went into remote country looking for something uncommon. I had been seeing the usual birds near my neighborhood. Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Red and White-breasted Nuthatches, Cardinals, Cooper’s and Red-tailed Hawks. Good to see, but not uncommon. So I figured I’d get away from homes and malls. I wanted to walk into some real woods, maybe find a river. It’s fun to start with a goal and I had two. One realistic, one not. A Belted Kingfisher and a Bald Eagle.

I found an expanse of old woods, and there was a river, too. But no Kingfishers. Eagles? Forget it. Even birds I called “usual” near home, nuthatches and woodpeckers, were nowhere to be seen. Still, it was enjoyable to get into the wild. The only bit of civilization was a visitor’s center where you could pick up a map and get warm. They had a feeder out back.

In the feeder were three big, gray pigeons gobbling seeds. The feeder was too small for them, and wobbled. These birds are “Rock Doves” but everyone calls them pigeons. City birds. Birds of train platforms, fire escapes, rooftops and downtown parks where people throw crumbs. Pigeons can be a nuisance. They clutter Saint Mark’s in Venice and sit on Nelson’s head in London.

How did these city birds find a feeder way out in the sticks? I remembered having a similar question about the American White Pelicans I saw on Yellowstone Lake in Wyoming. Sure, the lake was big, but c’mon, it’s in land-locked Wyoming. How did the first pelicans find it?  And how did three pigeons know it would pay to leave the big city for a remote spot in the woods? If anyone has an answer, please tell.  In any case, I left thinking that I never did see something uncommon. Then it hit: What could be more uncommon than those common pigeons in that remote forest?

Today, instead of walking in a wild place, I went into a dismal place. But it was the right thing, the only thing, to do. I spent part of the day with family members visiting an aging relative. This aging relative is a graceful and funny old woman who has lived so long that she now has to reside on what can only be called a dead end street. This dead end street is a big institutional building, a grim and medieval place of wheelchairs, walkers, oxygen tubes, medicinal smells and resignation. It’s a tunnel with no light at the end. But it’s a reality that can’t be avoided, especially on a holiday weekend when family sees family.

So what does this have to do with two-fisted bird watching and our attempt to record daily sightings? Not much, I guess. Except there was a hairy moment in the parking lot and it caused the mood to turn on a dime.

We were leaving after our visit, quiet and sorry about the unavoidable circumstances of nursing homes and those being nursed. At the edge of the parking lot, there was a fence dividing the nursing home’s property from a large cemetery. The land of the dead neighboring the land of the near dead. A coincidence, maybe. Or just a convenience. You see how the mood can get dark in such a place?

In a tree along the fence a bright white movement caught my eye. I looked, all bird-watching senses alert. I remembered seeing white spots in trees once as I drove through the streets of Juneau, Alaska and they turned out to be the heads of Bald Eagles. So many eagles. They were Juneau’s pigeons.

The white I saw in the parking lot tree moved again. I located it quickly in the sunshine. It was the bright parts of a large black and white woodpecker, a spunky bird that was pecking away at dead bark and moving up, down and around the tree, always staying in full view. I said “Hey, look, a Hairy Woodpecker.” For the moment, the others let the word “hairy” alone, and they looked at the bird. I said, “See the little red dot on its head? Cool.” They all thought it was cool. One wise guy in the family said, “How do you know it’s a woodpecker” and I answered, “Cuz it’s peckin’ wood.” And we laughed.

It was patterned like the more common Downy Woodpecker, but was quite a bit bigger, maybe 9 or 10-inches, almost the size of a Red-headed or Red-bellied Woodpecker, and with a long bill. Clearly a Hairy. Why’s it called a Hairy Woodpecker? I figured I had to look that up. Maybe because hair’s more than down and this is more bird than a Downy Woodpecker. Seems logical. One of us said “I don’t see any hair,” and we laughed again, as we watched the bird pecking away, looking bright and clean and alive in the sunlight.

It was a gloomy day, pure November in the Midwest. The sky was low and heavy with gray clouds. There was a brisk wind and slight mist. Trees were mostly leafless. I was hiking in a nature preserve, getting away from work and people. The cold wouldn’t let you get comfortable; you had to pay attention to it, and you had to pay attention to the wind. So you forgot your own problems. But if you had any, the gray day made a good background for them. Birds? Nothing doing. I’d seen a crow flying in the distance, but there were no birds here. Just the misty wind and the solitude. I’d seen more birds on the drive over, Red-tailed Hawks sitting on poles along the highway. Starlings flying in a pack like a school of fish, going nowhere. Not much else. Around my house there would be Juncos and Cardinals. But here in the wild, nothing. Then it all changed. Just when you think you’ve got things figured out, that you know the name of the game, that the day and your mood are in synch, just then, nature throws you a surprise. There was a cyclone fence at the edge of the preserve. It looked odd; it had a bluish tinge. The openings in the wire were plugged with something. What the….? I got my binocs up and took a look. Fifty, maybe more, Eastern Bluebirds were all over the fence, perched in the openings. Some were bright blue, some grayish blue, the difference between males and females. Some were flying around while others were sitting, puffed up against the cold wind. Some where on the ground. There was a lot of bluebird action along that fence. A whole flock, with their orange and white fronts and blue backs, completely out of place in the gray world I’d accepted. I found myself smiling. I hadn’t been smiling before seeing the Eastern Bluebirds. You never know when a wild place will throw you a curve.

I saw Wild Turkeys but I’m not sure they count. This turkey question has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. Pure coincidence. I was on the Interstate, barreling through southern Wisconsin. In a distant field there were a flock of turkeys. Black, skinny, wild-looking. Their profile, their shape, their behavior made them unmistakable. One problem: they were a quarter mile away, and I was going 70. I wasn’t sure they counted as a sighting. There was glass, steel, concrete, truck exhaust and lots of open space between them and me. I wanted to count them. After years of bird watching I’d never been able to put Wild Turkeys on my list. But did they count? Once, in Yellowstone I saw a grizzly bear with two cubs. But I was on a high mountain road and the bears were in a valley miles below. I’d never have noticed if there weren’t a few people looking at them through scopes. In my binoculars they were small dark specks. Can I say I saw Grizzlies? I honestly don’t think so. In Alaska I saw Pigeon Guillemots, exotic sea birds of the North Pacific. But they were on a cliff and I was on a boat. I knew they were Guillemots, but they were too far away for me to feel that we were in the same place at the same time. Was it a sighting? All this came back—the bears, the Guillemots—as I sped past turkeys in a Wisconsin field. I guess serious birders have a protocol to determine when a sighting counts and when it doesn’t. I only have myself to please. And I gotta be honest: I’m not pleased when I see a bird for the first time as I’m going 70 and the bird’s a quarter mile away. The wild turkey gets a half-hearted, penciled-in spot on my list.

I was hoping not to see birds. This is unusual. I was out of town, far from home, and when I travel, I check out the local birds. But there I was, face pressed against the window, thinking, “birds, don’t be there.” What’s the deal with that? I was on a plane speeding down a runway at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. I’d been in Manhattan all week (the reason for a gap in our “daily sightings” blog) and was heading home. As we left the gate, I remembered the plane that took off last January from LaGuardia and sucked a bunch of geese or starlings or who knows what, into its engines. The engines stopped running and the plane had to ditch in the Hudson River. It was a heroic act of piloting by the now-famous captain, “Sully” Sullenberger. You know the story, everyone survived, no need to elaborate. News coverage at the time pointed out that there’s no way planes can avoid rare and random bird hits. So there we were, same airport, same runway, same kind of plane, same time of day. I was a bird watcher, okay, watching hard for flocks of geese, flocks of anything. There were a few Herring Gulls in the distance, but nothing threatening. We rolled down the runway and lifted above LaGuardia without a problem. The plane was cramped and crowded, running two hours late, and had a couple of sneezing passengers. But there were no birds. That was good news.