West Virginia: Almost Heaven

I'm fresh off my third stab at the New River Birding And Nature Festival in West by-God Virginia, and have once again demonstrated a nearly virtuosic inability to recognize any birds. Seriously, no one holds a candle to me on this. I have the Black And White Warbler down solid. He sounds like a squeaky hamster wheel and nobody else does, and he looks like a little fuzzy zebra and nobody else does. He's mine, dammit. I'm pretty good at the loud, low, whackety one ("ovenbird"), too, and by the end of the week could even name several of the men attending the festival ("Dave").

If you were to look at my brain--it's very thin up there, you can see straight through in a strong light--you would notice that my cerebral cortex is very smooth. Everything slips right off of it, and new information can't get a purchase. At this festival, fortunately, with regard to the bird situation, I am surrounded by freakishly competent, helpful, and in some cases really cute birding guides. They're nice as pie. They're still nice by late afternoon when I tug at their arms at a particularly lovely snippet of birdsong and say what was THAT? and they say, kindly, through clenched teeth, "it's still a Carolina wren."

The warblers are talented. They're like little orchestra conductors. One note and they've got everyone pointing in the same direction. Another trill and binoculars everywhere snap into place. A twist of a little feathered head in the sunshine, and camera shutters are going off in unison.

There are more birds here, even now, than you can shake a stick at, and we know that because we've been shaking one stick or another at them for a while. Their once-unbroken forest home has been well and duly shattered. Their insect dinners are beginning to show up all out of synch with their migrations.  You know you're in West Virginia when everyone is polite and calls you ma'am, and when delight has an echo of doom. And you hear things like:

Look! It's the Least-Spotted Seldom Bird! The last of  his kind! See the tree with the baby car seat and all those tires at its base? He's in the little tree right behind it, just next to that mattress,  up at two o'clock about a foot above the plastic bag.

Click to embiggen, if you dare.

We're at the base of a shimmering green mountain, on the sandy banks of the Gauley River. A Swainson's warbler is hiding in the rhododendrons and being a total tease. Pipevine swallowtail butterflies cling to the wet sand and fan their wings. A foot away is a regiment of plastic bottles, at ease, staged for the next campaign: the Gauley to the New River, lined with coal trains; the New to the Kanawha, the Kanawha to the Ohio to the Mississippi and, yes ma'am, the Gulf of Mexico! Lawsy! Sadly, they will not be able to join their plastic brethren in the Pacific Gyre, where they could have hoped to be picked up, stashed in a crop, and fed to a baby albatross. But they still have the compensation of eternal life.

It's hard for me to imagine tossing aside a plastic bottle, let alone several a day or a pickup-load, but in a world of poverty and Walmart and plastic crap and TV noise, the connection to nature gets snapped off, and is replaced by boredom, anxiety, and the suspicion something has been stolen from us: all of it feels like the dull ache from a phantom limb. You can come to West Virginia and still see everything we are losing, and how we are losing it.

Speaking of conservation, it's not too late to sponsor me in the Birdathon! Your tax-deductible donations support the work of the Portland Audubon Society, and make me dang proud to know you, too. Click here, and thank you!

And When I Roll A Log, I Put It Back

Y'all can park your asses on a warm beach in Mexico if you want to, but I'm going to vacation in West Virginia. I'm going to the New River Birding And Nature Festival for the third time, and the birds are plenty compelling--particularly there, where I will be surrounded by people who will point them out for me and hang little name tags on them--but I'm in it for the Nature part too. Especially the salamanders. I stand second to no one in my admiration for salamanders (a.k.a. the crown of Creation). I will be the one rolling logs while everyone else is looking up. There is no place on earth with a greater diversity of salamanders than the southern Appalachians. There's a reason for that.

These mountains have been in the works for a very long time. They started to rise up 480 million years ago and really hit their stride when Africa plowed into the eastern shore of North America, which, as you might imagine, wrinkled things up something fierce. Everything got folded up and pleated and shoved around, and then eroded, so that now you can find wildly different kinds of deep, rich soil in close proximity: sandstone ridges proud with pines right next to limestone soils sprouting the finest

hardwood forests anywhere, everything imaginable growing side by each.

It's just an accident of plate tectonics that the whole series of ridges and valleys runs north-south. Shitty arrangement if you're an American pioneer with your heart set on going west and displacing natives, but terrific if you're a northern species trying to contend with the ice ages. If an ice sheet is bearing down on you, it's an easy slide south down the valleys. If it retreats, you can go back, or you could just pop up-mountain and hang out in the coolth. By the time the ice ages petered out, all kinds of plants and animals had migrated to the southern Appalachians and found a home somewhere in the rumpled landscape.

The festival is in the New River Gorge area. Our pioneers named the river New because it just sort of showed up without being formally introduced on any of their maps, but it is not only not new, it's, like, the third oldest river in the world. There's a crazy amount of water in these hills. Bright, fresh water. Pure treasure.

One of the draws of this place for a birder is the fact that a whole sparkle-box of warblers wants to come here for Spring Break to get lucky. They're all dressed up in their finest and they're singing their fuzzy little hearts out and they're horny and they don't care who's watching, evidently. They've flown their tiny fannies all the way here from south or central America, hundreds of miles, and in many cases they have flown directly to the same tree they were in last year. Sometimes the tree isn't there. Sometimes the forest isn't there.

Sometimes the mountain isn't there.

Sometimes the whole damn range is gone. Sadly, some of the bits that got folded up in the mountains are fossilized peat bogs--coal--and the easiest way to get at it, in order to burn it all up, is to blow up the mountains and shove their carcasses into their own valleys. Sure, it's like doing neurosurgery with a broadaxe, but it's weirdly efficient, if you don't give a damn about water, or plants, or animals, or life in general. Or the future.

Charleston citizens were rightfully incensed early this year when a chemical used in coal processing ruined their drinking water. Where, they demanded, was the government entity responsible for keeping their water safe? Many of those same people have spent years fighting those same government entities because if they were truly allowed to safeguard the environment, there wouldn't be any mountaintop removal coal mining at all. And folks here want those jobs. They're justifiably proud of the generations of miners who have all worked a hell of a lot harder than any of those hippies trying to shut them down. And for all the natural treasure surrounding them, they don't have a Plan B. Coal mining is it.

Could be there won't be much more mountaintop removal in Appalachia, but  it won't be because the EPA finally did their job. It will be because the coal companies have figured out they can get the stuff out cheaper in Wyoming. And they don't give a damn about the miners left stranded. They never have. Not any more than they care about the salamanders, or their own grandchildren.

Noticing

Most people look at birds with a hazy benevolence. They appreciate the robins and cardinals for being recognizable and they wish the other birds would announce themselves too, but unfortunately they remain brown and indistinct and hidden in the shrubbery. Some birds will helpfully tell you who they are, like the chickadee, but others, like the red-winged blackbird ("pull on my PEE-ter!") will not. It takes a birder to sort them out.

Me and Kelly, 2010

And most people have nothing against birders, but think, somehow, that their obsession is sort of trivial and dorky. But the only thing keeping most people from being bird dorks is the ability to see the birds. I once witnessed the transformation myself. I met my friend Kelly at the New River Birding And Nature Festival, true, and so I assumed she was fond of birds, but it was not a fully fledged fondness at first. Mostly she had a fondness for her wife Sara. (Everyone does.) We were both on the introductory field trip, and the guide had pointed out a beige flittiness in the branches above. And then he instructed us to--pay attention here--keep looking at the flitty area while bringing the binoculars up to our eyes. Well! I'd only been using binos for fifty years at that point without having that particular piece of information. It should be obvious, but many people, such as myself and Kelly, locate movement in the treetops and then look down to make sure we get the binoculars on our eyes and then look back kup to scan the tree with them, trying to find the movement again, to no avail. It's like shooting the Hubble telescope into space with a wobble built in and hoping a nova will sail into view.

A Cuteness Bomb

So it turns out that people of ordinary intellect can indeed lift binoculars in place without missing or stabbing themselves in the eyeballs with them, and then what do they see? Why, they see cuteness bombs going off all over the canopy. The flitty thing resolves into a blue-gray gnatcatcher pasting together a teacup nest out of lichens and nearby is a by-God tufted titmouse with a perky tiara and an orangey spot on the side and a black nose and a button beak and way over there is a mossy pendulous nest like a giant green scrotum and just like that Kelly and I are birders, complete with squeaky noises and zeal. Kelly instantly began rabbiting around the landscape like there was a whole skyful of news and she was behind in her reading. Fly as they might, those birds were not going to escape her and her newly useful binoculars. All it takes is noticing, and all that takes is binoculars and, for people without a grasp of the obvious, a sensible lesson in using them.

Once I'd come back home an accomplished noticer, Dave set up a bird resort right outside my writing room. There was a chickadee house, a suet feeder, and a hummingbird feeder within a yard of the window, and now, instead of staring into space while not writing, I could look at birds while not writing. I got regular visits from jays, a flicker, a gang of bushtits, and hummers that will happily kick every one of their asses for them. Two chickadees started hanging out a lot. They looked identical, but now I was a noticer. One of them, Studley, had a lower voice and seemed a little more aggressive, tidying up the suet feeder by scraping bushtits off it. Studley and Marge began bringing grass to the house and dumping it inside. (I learned later that they were making a mattress.) One day Marge wouldn't leave Studley alone and finally caught up to him and did something to his rear end that I would never have expected of Marge, and went a long way toward explaining why they never answered to their names. It only took a few seconds and then Studley retired to the house and a couple weeks later both Marge and Studley were hauling in grubs and bugs at the rate of 500,000 a day and evidently they made baby birds out of them, because that was the next thing that came out.

That's all a birder is. A noticer. The more you notice, the more you care. The more you care, the more you love. The more you love, the happier you are. My gratitude goes out to Jeff Gordon, the president of the American Birding Association, for showing Kelly and me how to spot birds with our binoculars, and waiting until we were out of earshot before laughing at us. Try it yourself. Because the little feathered buggers are everywhere, zipping all over the planet like valentines from God, and most of us are acting like we've got more important mail coming. But we don't.

My friend Julie Zickefoose is a virtuoso noticer and the proprietor of eighty acres of bird joy on the hem of Ohio. If you want to see how happy you can get just by paying attention, have a look at her luscious new book, The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds. You'll be plumb inspired.

Birding Posts: The Final Movement

I'm at an age where life tends to be self-humbling. This can set you free. When I was packing for my trip to the New River Birding And Nature Festival, preparing to meet a bunch of people I'd only met on line, I was moved to do something about my Mom Jeans. I didn't even know there was anything wrong with Mom Jeans, and when I was brought up to speed, it did occur to me that I ought to be old enough to escape derision for wearing them. Still, I succumbed and bought a pair with a very modest lower-rise. Somehow I didn't notice till I got home that now my underwear was pooching out on top of them. Well, that's it. I'm not getting new underwear to bird in. There's a limit.

I needn't have fretted. Birders are nice people and they aren't going to look at your underwear unless you're perched in a tree forty feet up. Even then they're going to be looking for other identifying field marks. In my case, spots on the chest and a lack of eyebrows.

And while we're on the subject of all those people staring straight upwards into the butts of birds, isn't it time for another good Poop Post? Isn't this a narrative that should just flow? Since I began writing Murrmurrs, poop posts have showed up with regularity. I have a whole collection of Poop Posts piled up over there in the left margin, and those don't even include the ones that only mention poop in passing.

Bird poop is interesting in itself. Birds don't pee, they just produce uric acid and hitch it onto their poop, which together account for the white and dark portions. This way they don't have to fly lugging around a full bladder. They poop, pee, mate and lay eggs using the same hole. It's a one-stop slopping center. This combo pee-poop thing does make bird poop more decorative, which was never more clearly illustrated than recently in Texas when a single bird poop draped over the rear-view mirror of a car attracted a horde of Catholics who saw the Virgin Mary in the splotch. This is just silly. I took a look at a photograph of the poop in question, and it totally could have been Mary Magdalene.

The thing about a good Poop Post is it should come naturally. It should not be forced out. Fortunately, there was a lot of sign on this trip that it was meant to be. You all can go to Disneyland if you want, but I prefer to be in the company of folks who get down on their knees to speculate about turd origins. Here, Julie Zickefoose is conjecturing that the giant doody piles on the bridge might be otter poop. Isn't that exciting? Another of our guides, Jeffrey Gordon, contributed the fact that there is a name for otter poop ("spraint," which sounds painful). With just a little research, I discovered that spraint is best identified by aroma, described as ranging from freshly mown hay to putrefied fish. If Julie didn't get quite close enough for a good snootful, it can only be because she was unaware of this tidbit of knowledge. Because naturalists are brave and wonderful people. If I have a choice, and I do, I'm signing up with otter poop people.

In general, scientists are more interested in poop than anyone but your mother, and she's over it by now. Much can be learned from poop, even dinosaur poop. Scientists study coprolites, which are fossilized dung, for clues as to the diet and health of the depositer. Put another way, a coprolite is a turd that has turned to stone, which, if it's ever happened to you, is no laughing matter. For all we know, that's what did in the dinosaurs.

Still, I might have been able to resist the call of the poop post, if it weren't for the Friendly Waving Poop we all saw at Cranberry Glade. I had stepped over it earlier, and knew it was coyote poop, and when we came back around the same area later, one of the turds was waving at us. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed that a handsome butterfly was feasting on the turd. So much for "pretty is as pretty does."

Five minutes later, we were in the Cranberry Glade Nature Center and came upon an exhibit that I am proposing as the official Murrmurrs Shrine. Please note that the exhibit is protected only by a sheet of Plexiglas, and one or more people had already been compelled to extract portions of the exhibit and stuff them under their shirts. See, it isn't just me.

And when a poop post is in the pipeline, it's best not to hold it in.

A Bird In Hand

If you want to be a real bird-watcher, you'll need to get up earlier than you want to, strap on a bra for your binoculars, and assume a position favored by the Mercenary Chiropractors of America. If you're an Oregonian plunked into the middle of a forest in West Virginia, prepare also for episodes of insomnia brought on by imaginary ticks. There's really no reason to engage in this pursuit. Except there's birds.

There are an insane number of them at the New River Birding and Nature Festival, and they're festive, all right. Good binoculars and a good trip leader will act like a prism, and splinter those nondescript Little Brown Jobs into rainbow colors. They are suited up, slicked back and strutting like it's Saturday night. The ladies don't stand a chance. The ladies are considerably duller, not to say they've let themselves go. But it's the males we're most likely to see.

They are slathered in bling, or "field marks," as the birders call them: necklaces, crowns, wing bars, tail spots, eyebrows, executioner's hoods, or rump patches (the rump is always the first thing to wear out). Or, in the case of the Magnolia warbler, all of the above. In fact, in the right light, you can just about make out the sequins and propeller beanie on a good Magnolia. Let's just say these boys are something to see. You might not see them unless you pish them off. They're just dots in the treetops most of the time, but in spring they go all West Side Story and zoom in close to see if your ass needs kicking. Once they get a load of your binocular bra, geeky duds and mouth hanging open, they go away again. You're no threat.

In theory, their songs are distinctive. I can't make them out, but accomplished birders can, and the birds are even better at it. Birds are able to distinguish many more notes than we are. If you slow down the recording of a bird song by half or more, you can hear them more clearly: "so I told Bob, I said, dude, I said, dude, I said, oh my gawd, check out the wing linings, dude, I mean totally, totally," when all we can hear at normal speed is "blah, blah, blah."

We also had a bird-banding demonstration from Bill Hilton, Jr., Hummingbird Czar, which was very educational, although watching him gesture with a bird in hand was a little off-putting, especially when he was feeling emphatic. He insists that the birds being trapped and handled feel no stress, because they are not like humans, and do not fret about how to pay the mortgage. Which is true; they're admirably calm about the whole mortgage issue. I would say, however, that we might approach the stress question scientifically, using Bill himself perhaps, scooped up by a giant, waved about, blown on, and stuffed into a tube head first. Then reassess.

You blow on a bird to lift its feathers and reveal details such as its sex and maturity. Turns out birds are totally naked underneath and that whole breast-feather ruse is just a big comb-over. See, I didn't know that until Bill blew his birds.

Bill was also able to feed a held hummingbird so that we could watch its head ripple on top. That rippling would be his tongue forking in the back and sliding up into his skull as he laps nectar. A nice brain massage probably relieves that stress they don't have, too.

Much can be learned by banding birds and tracking their movements, which is why you should always report it if you should accidentally Honda a banded bird. Somebody somewhere wants to know where it got flattened. There are different-size bands for different-size birds. On hawks, you just mark them with a Sharpie. (A little birder humor, there. The rest of you just talk amongst yourselves.)

Birders tend also to be interested in other living things--plants, critters. And this is also a Nature festival. Still, I was taken aback when my friend Debbie pointed straight at me first thing in the morning and announced "You need to go to the bathroom." No one has said those exact words to me since I was three. Was it that obvious? But she was merely alerting me to the night light on the outdoor biffy that attracted some lovely moths every morning for our perusal. And after a couple days, you get used to emerging from the potty into a phalanx of photographers.

I learned a lot. I may never master the category of Variants and Vagrants, defined as birds that show up looking all wrong where they have no business being. But I probably learned a hundred new birds, and if it weren't for the hole in my head I had the foresight to drill with drugs and alcohol in my twenties, I'd still remember them.

Of course, none of them live in Oregon.

Under Cover In West Virginia

This is your trusty reporter checking in from the New River Birding And Nature Festival, where I have been embedded for a week into a platoon of birders. I am in full birder camo with binoculars and zip-off pants and have undergone training in birder posture, mouth agape and head cranked back in a position known to cause strokes in elderly people. There are plenty of birds that muck about on the ground but we seem to be focusing on warblers in the treetops. Sustained warbler-watching causes a painful condition known as "warbler neck." (The development of streaky chin feathers is a whole different condition.) This can be alleviated with the purchase of a strap-on neck rest, which has the side benefit of maximizing dorkiness, by which solitary birders can recognize each other and possibly pair off.

In groups, birders tend to bunch up and point skyward, swiveling in unison like the coordinated tentacles of a sea anemone. Any individual tentacle may take responsibility for pointing out a "bird," which is what they call indistinct flitting movements in the peripheral vision. After that the tentacles operate as a unit.

The group leader is responsible for conjuring up the birds, concentrating on "lifers," or birds that someone doesn't already have on his Life List of birds. "What do you need?" the leader will ask, and then track down the target birds somewhere in the vicinity. He or she does this through the use of alert ears and the same slack expression also noted in daydreaming students and schizophrenics. Once the target bird is located by ear, the leader draws him closer by means of an iPod playing the bird's song, which compels the bird to get right up in his grill and point out that he's trespassing. This may seem like cheating. That's because it is cheating, but all the birders get a nice look, and the bird gets a "win" and a boost of confidence when the iPod shuts off.

This is known as "calling in" a bird, and, in fact, even at night, a group of birders can go out with an iPod set on "barred owl," and, if everyone remains very quiet, call in another group of birders with an iPod set on "barred owl." It's marginally satisfying.

Most birders, even the ones not qualified to lead a group, know a lot about birds. Many a time I found myself locked onto a bird, helpfully squeaking "birdbirdbird," and someone would materialize behind me with a running narrative about the bird in question, like a proximity-animated audio tour in a museum. And some have specific areas of expertise. Susan Kailholz-Williams, for instance, is in the raptor-rehabilitation business. Susan walks around with eagles on her wrist. Susan's first inclination, upon spotting a mouse in her bathtub, is to go fetch one of her handy birds of prey to take care of the issue. If Susan, who has an enormous personality, only some of which is in her shirt, wants to impart some of her wisdom about birds, I intend to listen carefully and say ma'am, yes ma'am.

I was pleased once again to be in a beautiful Eastern deciduous forest, not as fernily voluptuous as an Oregon rain forest, but more diverse in many ways and more likely to host salamanders. There were drawbacks. The woods are not as dense as I'm used to, and a person has to hike a long way to be out of sight of the others. Who are, after all, scanning every inch of the territory with binoculars. So if you were to tip over while peeing (for instance), and gash your knee and soil your left shoe (say), there might not be anyone to help within earshot. (Theoretically.) However, it cannot be ruled out that you would be dead center in a spotting scope with a 30x magnification and under surveillance by a line of twenty fascinated people.

The bunching-up behavior of birders is best observed in a place like Cranberry Glades, a beautiful bog in which human traffic is confined to a narrow boardwalk. The birders bunch up at a warbler sighting, then break up and drift away only to bunch up later next to a waterthrush. Seen from above, and speeded up, they look like an embolism.

Another behavior that might be observed in a clot of birders is the tendency of one or more members to make a "pish-pish" sound in an effort to attract birds. (Collections of British gentlemen, although similar, are distinguished by their ascots and beaks.) So, to recap, we have a group of people behaving in concert like a sea anemone wearing dorky paraphernalia and sounding as though they have sprung a leak. We are not here to judge, people. Remember, birders are human, too, and they may well have a life list, but they do have a life. Also, a list.

I'm listless, but heaven help me, I've gone over. Now I'm going to be the person in the car in front of you slaloming over the highway with my head craned out the window looking straight up. Don't give me that look, Miss Cell Phone Blabbypants.

A Great Place To Roost

So there I was on the way to the New River Birding and Nature Festival in Fayetteville, West Virginia, when it hit me: I'm Paris Hilton crashing a Mensa meeting. I'm not dumb, but I'm certainly ignorant. There is a difference, but it's not a practical one. I decided to ease into the birding experience by visiting Julie Zickefoose and Bill Thompson III at their 80-acre sanctuary in Whipple, Ohio. This is like popping in on the Pope to do a little churchin'.

First off, Julie wasn't even home when I showed up. She was out fetching a sickly barred owl someone had called her about, and had to stop by the store to stock up on sickly barred owl supplements. Unfortunately, that rescue attempt ended sadly, but she had a baby mourning dove handy-by to lavish attention on, and within ten minutes of her arrival she was loading up a syringe of baby-mourning-dove gruel and sending it beakward. So far, pretty much like any other visit.

The next morning we were up in the bird-watching tower, scanning in every direction to tot up feathered migrants and mark down their arrival dates. Bill and Julie were swiveling about like radar dishes, pointing out dots on the horizon and extracting strands of birdsong from the general jumble. It was virtuosic, like watching a mercury nucleus naming all eighty individual electrons from the orbiting swarm. To get a rough idea of my demeanor during this demonstration, airdrop a Norwegian into a crowded Mexican marketplace and watch her rotate slowly, trying to locate an identifiable fruit. I concentrated on nearby things. That's how I found the jelly bean glistening on the edge of the wall. "Ooo, an Eastern Bluebird fecal sac!" Julie sang out. "The babies' poop comes out wrapped in a little membrane and the parents can take it out of the nest and keep things tidy. It's all bundled up. Touch it!" No, you.

A person can learn a lot tagging after these two. That is why I now know how to find the trail into the surrounding woods. You just follow the line of skunk nose-prints in the mud and hang a right at the turkey poop, and there you be.

The rest of the morning it was just all the normal household stuff--share a bit of oatmeal with Charlie the macaw, make up a new batch of nestling formula and insert it into the dove, toss the breakfast eggshells on the garage roof for the barn swallows to pick up. We gabbled away at the table until the phone rang. "Shoot," Julie said, hanging up. "I almost forgot. I have an hour interview on NPR this morning and that was my two-minute warning. I've got to go to the good phone in the tower--you're welcome to listen in." Two minutes later she was live on the radio. That wouldn't even have been enough time for me to mop up the panic diarrhea.

I was unable to process the notion that Julie wasn't nervous, so I didn't eavesdrop, but spent the hour snooping at her watercolor paintings and romping with Chet Baker, the Boston terrier famous for operating a world-class doggie-kiss dispensary. I felt certain he was into the relationship since he had stuck his tongue in my mouth while I was snoring, causing me to drift into college nostalgia dreams. A Boston terrier is a good example of human-engineered canine evolution. He has a small, compact body, dense with compressed affection, and a flat face perfectly suited for off-loading surplus kisses. If humans can start with a wolf and selectively breed something with a muzzle like Chet's, surely we can develop a dog whose poop comes out pre-baggied. What a fine contribution that would be for the city dog market! You wouldn't even have to decant your Chihuahua from your purse, but just remove the fecal sacs along with your used Kleenex.

My reverie was interrupted by Julie returning, unscathed, from her interview, and then it was time to re-plump the dove, check the contents of a number of bluebird nesting boxes (she knocks first), and scope out the pileated woodpecker hole. Not his personal hole, but the one he excavated in a tree. And then I sat around with a beer and a dopey smile, watching Julie make a chicken pot pie and fry morels and feed the kids, Bill, Chet Baker, Charlie, and me. Julie is a compulsive nurturer. We are destined for glory, for I am a compulsive nurturee. I fit right in this menagerie, because at the Zick household, it's just one thing after a mother.

I hope all the other birders are like this.

New River Birding Virgin

Today I am winging my way to a birding festival in West Virginia. "But Murr," you are saying, "you don't know poop about birds." Not true. I know more about birds than the average person. It is only in the company of genuine birders that I come off lint-headed. Sadly for my reputation, there are birders everywhere. Look at the person to your right, then to your left: one of you has a life list of 350 birds, one of you is a Republican, and one of you will die soon. I'm throwing my lot in with the bird people.

And I know a little already. I even have a vestigial biology degree. But I couldn't tell a greater spindly-legs from a lesser spindly-legs unless they were standing right next to each other, and even then I couldn't rule out that one of them is just a freak.

The fact is, I'm not a very good birder. Well, I'm not actually a birder at all, but not for lack of trying. Well, okay, it is for lack of trying, but it isn't because I don't aspire to birderdom. Well, I don't really aspire to birderdom. I'd just like to be able to know what a bird was when I saw it. Okay, I'd like to be able to see it.

I'd settle for that. I walk in the woods a lot, and if I had to rely strictly on the evidence from my own eyes, I'd have to conclude that Trees Make Tweety Noises.

Here in town, I'm pretty reliable spotting any of the five birds that frequent my yard. We have chickadees, scrub jays, juncos, little brown jobs and a finchy number. I do know their names. The finchy number is Boo Boo, and the big blue-headed fellow bashing in a mouse's head on the rain gutter is Guido. A little further afield, it's not uncommon to spot a flock of yellow-headed snatchflashers down on 82nd Avenue.

Anywhere else, I have to use my binoculars and a field guide. This never works out for me. Once I locate the bird, I document it exhaustively: white eyestripe, grey breast, spot on the wingtips and a light patch on the tail. Then I get the guide. Which says that nothing is conclusive unless I can verify the yellow undertail coverts. How am I supposed to verify anything that is under tail and covert? Without being rude?

Or I'll memorize eight features on a three-inch bird and find that it is still not in the book anywhere, which sends me whining to a real birder with my description. "Hmm," real birder says thoughtfully. "Might be a juvenile, or a variant." See, that's just not fair.

Many people see no reason to know all the birds and their little bird parts. But I am not among them. I know that in life the more you know, the more you can see, and the funnier it all is. If you see a giant slug on the trail in front of you, you might be inclined to step over it in distaste like it was God's Loogie, unless you also knew that it has an enormous, diaphanous blue penis coming out of his head. I don't care who you are: that is interesting.

So how did I go from Boo Boo and Guido to the New River Birding And Nature Festival? It started innocently enough. I had this teeny little blog no one read, and then one day, through Internetular magic, a woman named Julie Zickefoose tripped over it and liked what she saw. I liked her back. She sent her whole tribe my way. They were birders, she turned out to be their Queen, and now I have a Facebook page infested with nature lovers I've never met in person. They keep me up-to-date on such things as the first phoebe sighting of spring, or the first peent of the woodcock, or the fact that there is such a thing as a woodcock, or that he goes peent. I'm getting all knowledged up, and look forward to getting even educateder.

But if Julie had been an astronaut, just think of where I'd be flying off to now.

I'll be off the grid and undercover with the birders for a week, but I've got Murrmurrs loaded up and ready to poop out posts on schedule while I'm gone. Meanwhile, if you want genuine Julie Zickefoose Woodcock Underpants, and I know you do, click here.