BIRDING OR BUTTERFLYING?

My birding trip with the Audubon Society today was a misnomer. It was more like a butterfly trip. The birds we saw, at least for me, were too far away to shoot and the ones I did shoot were too far away or blurred. But we did capture some good butterfly photos. I’ll be editing them shortly and will post them.

After a few hours, the sun out in the wilderness became hot. Although the valley had almost triple digits, I guess we were lucky where we were, about 7,000 feet up.

Nothing exciting happened. Not even a bear or deer sighting. Again, bummer. The birds were so small, either in real size or by looking into the binoculars. I don’t know how these real bird geeks can see a full or half-circled eye on these tiny birds, birds flying fast. They can even see their colors. They can see a small bird in a tree hundreds of feet away. Maybe my eye isn’t that fast, but these people must have a sixth sense and that is to see birds in a tree, flying high up above and knowing what they are. When I say what they are, not only what species, but also a breakdown of that particular species into a subspecies. They even know their Latin names. True, many are biologists, teachers and everything you can think of related to birds, but for us beginners, who remain closed mouths and opened eyes, that’s all we can really do. Maybe once or twice we just shout and point, “Bird!” We leave it to the experts to name the bird. It gets really frustrating when everybody sees a nest, a certain bird in a tree or snag, knows the name of it and here I am still searching for the bird, even though the bird has been on a branch for several minutes. Dugh.

Anyways, check back in a day or two for the photos, as I said, mostly of butterflies.