Hobbies You Might Not Want To Admit To

Morning on the deck in the South Chilcotins. While it is cloudy, I can see some extremely promising clear breaks to the south-west - even the ‘official’ weather forecast is looking optimistic. Weather aside, morning on the deck is a magical time, particularly when accompanied by a most excellent cup of coffee, as it is this morning (who am I fooling - show me a morning when I haven’t been accompanied by a good cup of coffee, and I’ll show you the inhabitants of hell learning to ice fish).

Morning is a particularly good time to observe birds. Birds, you say? Karen, you and the Pensioner better extricate yourselves from the boonies right quick - you are walking a fine line of eccentricity. (and trust me.... this concern is echoed with great resonance by our children....and not just with regard to the birds...). I’m with you, but hear me out. 

For the most part, I have assumed that birds fall into the following categories: robins, crows, seagulls, ducks, and brown/grey birds. (OK - I could probably identify an owl in a pinch). Astoundingly, I am finding that latter category - brown/grey birds - is considerably more diverse than I had originally understood. First of all, there are small, medium and large brown/grey birds. Who knew? AND.... some of these brown/grey birds have other colours on them! Like yellow, and red...! Amazing. 

Depending on your mind set, bird-watching can be either enormously satisfying or fully exasperating. Consider for a moment the size of your average field guide to birds vs. your average field guide to mammals.  Not even comparable. In this area we have, what? -  two varieties of bears, a couple of kinds of deer, moose, wolves, coyotes, a few cats, a bunch of weasils and the standard sampling of rodents?  But birds.... I couldn’t begin to list them! I mean, there are at least three different woodpeckers alone! (I say this only to impress upon you my new-found additional category of birds - woodpeckers have now been separated from the brown/grey category - some of them have red on them). And there’s no guarantee that one bird of a variety will look the same as another - apparently sex, age and whether or not it’s breeding season impact the plumage. Seriously? Hundreds upon hundreds of varieties AND a variety of permutations of colouring amongst each? Give me a break... or a bear - a bear always looks like a bear.

Nonetheless, the more time I spend observing this inexhaustible array of plumed personalities (did I just call them ‘plumed personalities’? ... I seriously need to get back to civilization....), I begin to understand the birdwatcher’s obsession. I’m not sure I am endowed with sufficient patience to make a serious hobby of birdwatching (plus I would like my children to continue to admit to being related to me) but there is a certain satisfaction to being able to say I can identify a red-breasted sapsucker. Wow. Pack up the car - I think the fine line may just have been crossed.