I have always been a bird watcher of sorts. Certainly a bird lister, but not a fanatic. Birds are interesting, if not always easily observable, and watching even common species and observing their behavior is part of the pleasure of watching. If you can get a photo, so much the better. It takes time and patience to be a bird watcher unless you are the caricature of the person who goes on a bird watching tour and just ticks off as their own what the days activities brought to light, without actually hearing or seeing the birds. I try to see any bird I list and if I base the identification on a call or song, I want it to be one I heard and was able to recognize. Because I am not a good bird call birder these are relatively few so far. I may try to get better at this, as I have missed some interesting species because I could not recognize the calls. As I am an invertebrate zoologist and never took a course in ornithology, I can hide behind my lack of real training in the field.
I find birds fascinating. This has been especially so since it developed that they were likely theropod dinosaurs that took to the skies - the only line of dinosaurs that survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. More and more evidence has piled up, including evidence that feathers preceded flight and some of the small raptor-type dinosaurs actually had them. Thus I can envision the mockingbird and the vultures as descendants of the relatives of Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor .
I don't have to travel far to see birds - I've seen three species of hummingbirds in my back yard - but visits to other places produced views of an Elegant Trogon and Blue-throated Hummingbirds, (Cave Creek in the Chiracahua Mountains of Arizona), Harris's Hawk and Black Vultures (West of Tucson, Arizona), a Roseate Spoonbill (Central Florida), Black Hawks (Northern Range of Trinidad), Yellow-eyed Juncos (Gray Ranch in SW New Mexico), White Pelicans (central Florida), Common Loons (Seahorse Key, Florida), Pileated Woodpeckers (Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia), Mew Gull, Black-legged Kittiwakes and Glaucous-winged Gulls (Glacier Bay, Alaska), and many more. However, my immediate surroundings in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico has produced a number of interesting sightings of my own and of others. Within a 10 mile radius I've seen everything from Long-billed Curlews and White-faced Ibis, to a Peregrine Falcon and a Green Heron, plus Black-crowned Night Herons, Great and Little Blue Herons, Cattle Egrets, a Great Egret, Black-necked Stilts, a Cordilleran Flycatcher, Lesser Gold Finches, Gold Finches, Yellow Rumped, Wilson and Orange-crowned Warblers, Western Screech Owls, Chihuahuan Ravens, Great-horned Owls, Red-tailed Hawks, American Kestrels, Summer Tanagers, White-crowned Sparrows, Cooper's Hawks, a Kingfisher, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Dark-eyed Juncos, Curved-billed Thrashers, Northern Mockingbirds, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Turkey Vultures, Barn Swallows, Red-wing Blackbirds, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Say's Phoebes, Western Kingbirds and of course the three hummingbirds- Black-chinned, Rufous, and Calliope, plus the common House Finches, Inca Doves, American Robins, White-winged Doves, Mourning Doves, Great-tailed Grackles, House Sparrows, European Starlings, and American Crows, and others. In short I can stay pretty much at home and see all sorts of birds, with new ones showing up every year (although I did not see them, a White-tailed Kite and a Northern Cardinal were seen along the Rio Grande this year, and a pair of Mississippi Kites nested once on the edge of Mesilla about 20 years ago- dive bombing us as we walked the canal!)
When we used to have snow during the winter (now a rare event), our bird populations were bolstered by flocks of Cedar Waxwings, occasional groups of Scrub Jays, and three species of Nuthatches. In addition several people (not me) saw a Brown Creeper in the valley during one of these events. On occasion I have also seen Ringed-billed Gulls and Sandhill Cranes flying overhead. In short it is a birders paradise!
Knowing the name of a bird and being able to identify it are, in reality, only beginnings. It is necessary to become acquainted with at least the local birds, using binoculars and a good bird guide before you start to notice other things about the birds. You notice, for example that Great-horned Owls start courting during the winter and that some birds are always around (White-wing Doves, Great-tailed Grackles), but others (Turkey, Vultures, Barn Swallows, Western Kingbirds, etc.) only show up during the warmer months or (American Crow, and our various associated "snow birds," like Cedar Waxwings.) colder months and some (like Wilson's Warblers), are only "passing through" from wintering grounds to the south to breeding grounds in the north, or back again.
There are very good guides available for bird watching, a number of good to excellent binoculars and spotting scopes (useful for water birds especially), and a fair number of birding groups, most associated with the Audubon Society. Bird watching is thus one of the easiest hobbies in which to engage, but also one of the hardest to do right. As I touched on at the start of this diary, one needs patience, the ability to be quiet, endurance, and a fair amount of knowledge. The good news is that all of these can be developed and thus anyone who is willing to put in the time and effort can become a good to excellent bird watcher. In some cases information on bird sightings and numbers are very useful to the scientific community in that each accurate sighting provides a data point that can be added to a growing bank of information detailing ranges, movements, and population declines or increases over time.
I recommend bird watching (or butterfly watching, or dragonfly watching, or botanizing, or amateur astronomy) as an antidote to the crazy world in which we currently live! Good watching to you.
Below the fold is a short album of some of my sightings in the valley.
Little Blue Heron along the Rio Grande.
Great Blue Heron, also along the Rio Grande.
Killdeer near Rio Grande at Mesilla, New Mexico.
Curved-billed Thrasher, Mesilla, New Mexico.
Northern Mockingbird, Mesilla Park, New Mexico.
Red-winged Blackbird along Rio Grande.
Male House Finch near the Rio Grande.
Cordilleran Flycatcher, Mesilla Park, New Mexico.
All photos by me, as usual.