Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

As with Friday, the weekend would prove to be some of the most productive time we spent both birding and networking within our rich community of birders, naturalists, and other lovers of nature observation and appreciation. Saturday was a whirlwind of warbler watching with several wonderful life birds thrown in for good measure. We started as we had the day before, rolling up in the car and into Magee Marsh. Before arriving on the boardwalk, Alison and I watched the optics tent slide past our windows. "I think it's time I bought a scope", I said as I gazed longingly at the rows and rows of tripods. "Well, we could do that now or come back later", Alison replied, smiling. "Later. I want to see if we can find more birds", I answered. "Ok", she said. After parking up, we noticed a huge exodus of cars from the parking lot. We are, in a sense, not the most timely of birders. Most birders are "larks", arriving at dawn or in th...

I'm now just 20 species away from the glorious 300 and got there, thanks to a renewed interest in warblers. I wasn't always like this. I remember years ago when I had a National Audubon Society Guide to the Birds of North America CD-ROM and like most things in my birding life, used it until it worked no more (or at least until technology advanced to the point where I couldn't upload it anymore). I listened to most bird calls religiously (mainly waterfowl due to an early interest in waterfowling history and decoys), but avoided some of the larger groups such as sparrows, shorebirds, and of course, warblers. Warblers terrified me with their random patches of yellow, small size, high-pitched songs, and other clues towards their baffling variety. At such a young age, I thought I could reasonably get away with never having to identify them in the field or by their songs and instead concentrate on the larger, more visible birds. It remained this way pretty much until I made it ...