The First Bird

So I just spent three weeks in Chile and Argentina, on a nature tour with my mom.  Prior to this trip, I was not interested in birds.  Not at all.  I had actually even stated this plainly, to an outdoorsy person on whom I should have been trying to make a good impression, in response to his declaration of a special love for birds: "Oh, really?  Hmm.  I really don't care about birds at all."   It was quite true at the time, and pretty much the end of our conversation and potential glorious life together.

I think it might have been because my eyes are just not that good.  I really can't see birds very well.  But what I discovered on this trip was BINOCULARS.  Using binoculars is like having super-powers: you can see tiny little specks up close!  It's like having a window into a secret world.  And a very interesting secret world it is!  And it's all over the place!  The whole planet is populated with birds, it turns out, giving you reasons to travel to all sorts of beautiful, exotic places.

So I turned into a bird watcher, even with the "baby binocs," as my new bird-watching friends called them, that had been loaned to me by a friend for the trip.  I didn't want anything too heavy, but felt I should have something along.  So I had these 10 X 25 Bushnells, suspended around my neck with a string.  These ones:


We began our trip in Santiago, Chile, and continued southward to Tierra del Fuego, then wound our way northward, stopping at the Valdés Peninsula, the pampas near Buenos Aires, and Iguazú Falls in the northern part of Argentina.  So I can say I began my bird-watching career in South America.  But this blog is not going to be about that; this blog is about my new life as a bird watcher in my home territory.  How I know I have turned into one is this: upon returning home, I glanced out the window.  In the bay were some birds!  It was freezing cold and snowing, but there they were, swimming along.  Now, my previous self would have just noted, "Oh, ducks!"  But my new bird-watching self went immediately for the binoculars and looked carefully at the birds.  It was hard to see through the falling snow and darkness of dawn, but I made out a green head, white collar, and rusty breast.  I looked in the bird book. Yes, there it was, confirmed:  mallards.

Now I kind of knew this already, having seen many mallards growing up, and I even know another kind of duck that we have out here:  merganzers.  They have more of a pointy head.  But I just wanted to be sure.

Here are the mallards, my very first bird sighting in my new life as a bird watcher:

So there you have it:

Heather's Life List so far, not including Chile and Argentina:
Mallards