Let's face it: nobody cares about the NFL's Pro Bowl. Last night at dinner, I questioned the six boys at my table about what they'd done over the long winter weekend, asking if any had watched the Pro Bowl. Not a hand went up. I asked if they'd seen the video of Blake Griffin dunking over Kendrick Perkins. Four hands shot up.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem. Even though it's been rescheduled from its previous position of irrelevancy--the weekend after the Super Bowl, when the grand football narrative of the season is over and done and nobody cares any longer--the Pro Bowl still offers the viewer nothing of value. As it's currently scheduled, the players on the two best teams can't even play, as they're busy with Super Bowl preparations. If you can't even guarantee a look at superstars like Tom Brady or up-and-coming studs like Rob Gronkowski or Hakeem Nicks, why should the viewer settle for lesser players?

It's an outmoded idea, a slavish attempt to recreate the pizzazz once created by baseball's All-Star Game. In the old days, before interleague play was cheapened, you'd want to catch the ASG because it might well be your only chance to see a great American League hitter--Dimaggio, Mantle, Carew, Ripken--facing off against a great National League pitcher--Dean, Koufax, Jenkins, Maddux. Heck, the odds of the Cubs making the World Series pretty much guaranteed their fans would never see their heroes against any AL players outside an All-Star Game. Best of all, if you heard some blowhard arguing that Tony Gwynn couldn't handle a Roger Clemens fastball, you could actually wait until the All-Star break and see what would happen. THAT would be worth watching.

But football? Every team plays every other team at some point; interconference play is the norm. And there's no mano-a-mano confrontation--it's all about groups of guys combining for team success. Even a star running back won't go anywhere if the star offensive linemen aren't knocking the star defensive linemen on their asses. And the problem there--the one identified by Pro Bowl quarterback Aaron Rodgers last weekend--is that the guys on the O-line have very little incentive to knock anybody on anything.

For a lineman, making the Pro Bowl brings a good deal of honor (and cash bonuses), plus a trip to Honolulu, but the game itself means nothing. And I promise, there's not a single lineman in the NFL who wants to put his career on the line by needlessly hurling himself violently into the crush of 300-pound bodies that is an NFL line of scrimmage. All it takes is one bad fall to destroy a knee or cause a concussion, after all. That's true for all players, but a quarterback is protected from most collisions--after he's thrown the ball, it's actually against the rules to hit him.

By contrast, collision is the raison d'etre for a lineman, and when millions of dollars are at stake, he wants to make sure he's getting something worthwhile for colliding. As a result, the Pro Bowl linemen don't try very hard, and the QBs and receivers are largely free to play catch, which is how the 2011 Pro Bowlers rang up 100 points between them, 90 of them from passing plays (12 TD passes and one interception return, plus extra points). There were over 900 passing yards in this game, but the teams combined for under 200 yards rushing. Why? Because rushing requires blockers to hit people, and that's just not likely to happen in a meaningless exhibition.

But if the Pro Bowl is a meaningless exhibition, and it is, I say don't try to hide the fact: CELEBRATE it.

Instead of a game nobody wants to watch, create an exhibition that's worth watching: the NFL Awards!

Let the players, like the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, select five nominees at each position. (You can require three per conference if you insist on recognizing the AFC/NFC split.) Those nominees earn trips to Honolulu, and on the Saturday night after the Super Bowl they arrive on the red carpet resplendent in formal wear of the most outlandish sort, sporting arm candy worthy of even jaded Hollywood reporters' awe, and gather inside to bask in their peers' respect and await the announcement of the winners.

Because once we've got the five best wide receivers or the five best cornerbacks gathered, we can go ahead and announce the All-Pro Team live. Imagine the tension! Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Steve Smith, Wes Welker, and Andre Johnson sit in their tuxes, eyes riveted on the podium, where former All-Pro wideouts Jerry Rice and Steve Largent read aloud the nominees' names, hoping to brandish a golden figurine of former commissioner Pete Rozelle before a cheering national audience. Rice opens the envelope, flashes a grin, and leans into the microphone: "And the Rozzie goes to..."

Box office gold, folks! Huge ratings, plenty of attention on the faces of guys usually seen wearing helmets, and no risk of injury! This is win-win! Add in the obligatory analysis of the fashions sported on the big night, and you've got an event that even those with no interest in football can enjoy! Why the NFL Network hasn't already figured this out I can't imagine, but I'm perfectly willing to share it in exchange for a modest royalty. Have your people call my people.

But if you even suggest a musical number where Tom Brady dances with Snow White, I'm out.


10:37 AM

If you've been waiting patiently for me to say something, well, thanks.

And if you've been waiting for me to say something about the fact that we're in a year that's divisible by four, meaning that we're having a presidential election in November, your patience is even more appreciated.

It's not that I have nothing to say on the subject, mind you. It's just that there doesn't seem much point. As frustrated as I've been by some of the thing President Obama has done, I've been quite pleased by some of the others, and I'm certainly not going to vote for anyone else given the alternatives provided by the shambling corpse of the Party of Lincoln. As Katharine Weber put it, Obama hasn't cured cancer, but that's not a good reason to vote for cancer.

And just how malignant are the four Republican alternatives to Obama? Well, "malignant," since it literally means "acting maliciously," is a strong word to use for Mitt Romney, who doesn't seem to have any malice in his soul. This is likely because he has no soul. For him to be malicious, he would have to have some kind of intention to inflict suffering, and Mitt Romney has no intention to do anything whatsoever; he only wants to BE something. There is absolutely nothing he could do that he wouldn't immediately undo if he saw any political advantage in the undoing. Sure, he might sell you into slavery, bite off your finger, or rape his dog if he thought it would help him become president, but it's not like he would mean it. He would also buy you back out of slavery, pay for your finger reattachment, or try to pretend dog rape was a sign of statesmanship if he thought it would help him become president. I think he would be a far worse president than Obama, controlled as he is by his unerring sense of which way the wind is blowing and lacking as he is in any ability to empathize with any American who isn't him, but at least you could take comfort in knowing that he could be bought, assuming you had enough money. And given the amount of money in Romney's Swiss bank and Cayman Islands bank accounts, you're going to need a lot of it.

On the other hand, "malignant" strikes me as an excellent description of Newt Gingrich, whose all-consuming self-aggrandizement has already proven more powerful than any vow of matrimony, oath of office, or sense of shame. A serial adulterer who specializes in bailing on women facing medical challenges, a Washington insider who claims he was serving as a historian for the very Freddie Mac group he excoriates, and an ethically challenged horndog who was given the boot by his own party following his disastrous attempt to bring down a president who was breaking the same vows he was, Gingrich has somehow persuaded a significant number of Republicans that it is better to hurl abuse at Obama and his supporters than to defeat them in November. And millions of Democrats agree with him.

What's astonishing about Rick Santorum is that compared to Gingrich, he doesn't actually look that bad, but on his own terms, ye gods. Aside from being the first sitting U.S. Senator to publicly compare homosexuality to man-on-dog sex, Santorum can also lay claim to being so unpopular in his home state of Pennsylvania that they bounced him from the Senate, allowing him to move to Iowa for what was apparently part primary campaign and part occupation. What he has over Gingrich and Romney is sincerity, but unfortunately, what he sincerely believes in is limited government--in his case, government that is limited to controlling anything two people might choose to do in bed, which would include outlawing contraceptives, homosexuality, abortion, and quite possibly sex outside the missionary position for purposes of procreation. The astonishing thing is that he himself has been in that most horrifying of situations, where a problem pregnancy threatened the life of his wife (and mother of their six children). The choice of inducing labor for the non-viable fetus or allowing the pregnancy to continue and potentially kill his wife was presented to Santorum, who called it "a pretty easy call." (As it happens, his wife began labor anyway, so he never had to exercise that choice.) I do not for a second fault him for making that choice, but I resent the fact that he wants to prevent every OTHER American from making it for themselves. He has even said that in case of rape, "I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created -- in the sense of rape -- but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you." I'll grant you, it's at least a consistent anti-abortion stance, but it's also a complete denial of the woman's agency, not to mention an insult to any woman who doesn't happen to worship the same deity Santorum does.

And then there's Ron Paul, who has the advantage of supporting some ideas I fully endorse. I too feel our ongoing War On Drugs has been a failure, and I agree that decriminalizing marijuana would be a sensible step in negotiating a settlement. I also believe we are as a nation too quick to throw our weight around overseas and would welcome more restraint in spending American dollars and lives. In general, I'm glad there's somebody out there espousing some libertarian principles, as there are certainly ways in which I would like to see the federal government's authority limited. Unfortunately, Paul's idea of limited government, like Santorum's, would still be powerful enough to outlaw abortion, which gives you an idea of just how strongly he feels about the whole "limited" principle. He's also a guy who made a great deal of money back in the 1990s by publishing newsletters with content so racist that it seems more like something you'd have read when lynch law was still in place in his home state of Texas, and his attempts to deny his involvement in those newsletters have been weak indeed; I don't have any reason to believe that he's a racist, but a guy who finds it politically advantageous to appeal to racists isn't a whole lot more admirable than the real thing. Besides, he's also been known to claim that Lincoln started the Civil War in order to free the slaves, which betrays an ignorance of American history so profound that it should disqualify him from serving in Congress, let alone in the Oval Office.

I voted for Obama in 2008 and would likely do so again after he followed through on his promises to end Don't Ask/Don't Tell, pull our troops out of Iraq, and get at least some kind of health care reform passed (not to mention ridding the world of Osama bin Laden and getting the U.S. auto industry back on its feet.) But if the only alternatives the GOP is going to present me are the yahoos above--guys who make Obama look worthy of Mount Rushmore--then all the incumbent has to do over the next ten months to get my vote is not sell our nuclear weapons on eBay.


8:28 PM

I am not a journalist. I have occasionally written things that have appeared in newspapers or magazines, but when that happens, I view it as a happy accident, a felicitous case of a periodical needing my own particular skills and/or perspective. Lord knows it's not a case of needing my journalistic skills, because I don't really see myself as having any. I have never worked on a newspaper (despite the fact that my boss pressed me into service as our school newspaper's co-advisor several years back), nor have I taken so much as a single journalism class.

But you don't have to be a journalist to know what journalism is, just as you don't have to be an educator to know what education is. I would certainly turn to an educator if I were attempting to figure out how to create a curriculum or design a course, but even people whose only experience with school is attending one have a pretty good idea of what a school's purpose is.

You can imagine, then, the gobsmacked look that passed across my face--and since I didn't see it myself, I have to imagine it as well--when I came across this astonishing piece by the Public Editor of the New York Times:

"Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?"

I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

Aside from the question of whether the act of trying to find out the truth is definable as vigilantism, given that the press's right to seek the truth is enshrined in American law, I can answer this question in only one way, and that way is with a resounding "DUH."

That a newspaper should even pose this question is astonishing and almost contradictory, as it would be for me to begin the first day of class by assigning my students an essay on "Should I Teach You Stuff?" After all, if the answer is "No," then there is no purpose to my coming to work the next morning. If the Times is not engaged in pursuing the truth, why even bother firing up the printing press for tomorrow's edition; we can all just sit back and read press releases from Rick Santorum's campaign manager.

It's one thing to say that a reporter should try to remain objective, but passing along falsehoods without examination or question is not objectivity; it's collusion.

Uncovering the truth, regardless of what partisans may claim it to be, is the fundamental purpose of a free press--what Nathan Arizona would call its "goddam raison d'etre." The press is free not because our founders considered newspapers a good way for journalists to make a living, but because they considered newspapers a necessity for democracy. Voters need to know the truth in order to cast their ballots effectively; if the press doesn't help them find out what's really happening, they cannot direct the government to protect their rights effectively. I'm sure that some sources will be upset by reporters who challenge their claims or seek corroboration or dig up evidence to show that their claims are false, but that is journalism.

A press that prizes the appearance of objectivity over the actual pursuit of the truth is a press that has voluntarily given up its freedom--and given up on our democracy in the process.

Or as a character on The Wire once put it, "A lie ain't a side of a story. It's just a lie."


4:06 PM

The fact that I saw more kinds of birds in 2011 was not because I had declared a Big Year in the traditional sense; that would have involved making deliberate plans to see as many species during the calendar year as possible. As I look at what I've been doing over the past 364 days, however, there's no denying it: this was a Big Year. I saw more birds, and learned more about birding) than I ever have in a single twelve-month period. Take a look:

JANUARY
Not much hardcore birding--mostly just looking around the home or checking out what was sitting on the wires by the roadside. 19 species, including:
Northern Mockingbird (first bird of 2011)
Carolina Chickadee
American Raven (over the guardhouse at Woodberry)
Carolina Wren (in our carport)
Red-shouldered Hawk
White-crowned Sparrow
American Robin (yes, they winter here)

FEBRUARY
Again, no outings dedicated to birding, but there were things to see. 10 species, including:
Northern Flicker (a common sight this year after several years of scarcity)
Red-tailed Hawk
Great Egret (logged in Newport News during a college visit with Dixon)
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Cooper's Hawk
Savannah Sparrow

MARCH
I leave home for my sabbatical on the 13th, at which point I enter a zone of heavy birding, both on the road to Ithaca and in the town itself, mainly at Stewart Park and on the grounds of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. No life birds yet, but plenty of stuff I haven't seen in a while. 38 species, including:
Eastern Phoebe (nesting in our carport again)
Ring-necked Duck (first species logged after leaving home)
Tundra Swan (one of many waterfowl species seen along the flooded Susquehanna River)
Redhead (first in over 20 years)
Black-capped Chickadee (first species logged at the CLO)
American Tree Sparrow
Snow Goose (first of many species logged at Ithaca's Stewart Park)
Canvasback
Bald Eagle
Green-winged Teal
Ruddy Duck
Wood Duck
Eastern Meadowlark (first species logged during my Spring Field Ornithology course)
Fox Sparrow
Rusty Blackbird
Northern Pintail

APRIL
Shifting into higher gear, with regular SFO field trips. Visits to Montezuma NWR and Braddock Bay Banding Station are highly productive, as is a short trip home to Virginia. 52 species, including:
Common Loon (first sighting in breeding plumage. Purty.)
Greater Scaup (swimming BESIDE some Lesser Scaups, making direct comparison possible!)
Great Horned Owl (nesting in Stewart Park's woods)
Wild Turkey
Common Redpoll (staying late at the CLO)
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (logged, appropriately, at the CLO's Sapsucker Woods preserve)
Long-tailed Duck
Common Teal (first lifer of 2011, seen with green-wings at Montezuma NWR)
Trumpeter Swan (second lifer of 2011, seen near the Montezuma Audubon Center)
Eurasian Wigeon (third lifer of 2011, seen on pond behind the Montezuma Audubon Center)
Sandhill Crane
Bonaparte's Gull (only my second-ever sighting)
Warbling Vireo (also only my second-ever sighting)

MAY
Now it's time for serious birding. Lots of migrants are coming through Sapsucker Woods, and I end the month with a trip through New England with my parents, but the jewel in the crown is our SFO class field trip to Cape May, New Jersey. 77 species, including:
Yellow Warbler
Nashville Warbler (lifer #4 for the year)
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Little Blue Heron (a surprise in Ithaca: a white-plumed juvenile visits the CLO pond)
Tennessee Warbler (lifer #5 for the year)
Laughing Gull (first species logged in Forsythe NWR for our epic SFO trip)
Forster's Tern
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Least Sandpiper (lifer #6 for the year, in the marsh of Forsythe NWR)
Seaside Sparrow (lifer #7 for the year)
Gull-billed Tern
Brant (lifer #8)
Black-bellied Plover
Clapper Rail (lifer #9, logged after we'd quit for the day and gone to eat dinner)
Wilson's Phalarope (lifer #10, logged after we'd gotten back on the bus following the rail sighting)
Purple Sandpiper (lifer #11, clambering on the rocks of Higbees Beach)
Black Scoter (lifer #12, off Higbees Beach)
White-eyed Vireo
Yellow-breasted Chat
Blue Grosbeak
Piping Plover
Scarlet Tanager
Baltimore Oriole (back at the CLO)
American Redstart
Chestnut-sided Warbler (second-ever sighting)
Blackpoll Warbler (second-ever sighting--and much, much better than the first)
Wilson's Warbler
Blue-winged Warbler (spectacular sighting: bathing in a stream not six feet from me)
Magnolia Warbler
Swainson's Thrush (lifer #13)
Bobolink (and yes, they sound just like R2D2)
Hooded Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Common Goldeneye (first seen since my trip to Cleveland in 2007)
Black-throated Green Warbler
Common Eider (lifer #14, spotted in the rain off the coast of Acadia National Park, Maine)
Black Guillemot (lifer #15, swimming alongside the eiders above)
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher (lifer #16, at Parker River NWR, Massachusetts)
Black Tern

JUNE
Sabbatical over, I'm home in Virginia at last, but I get in a quick visit to West Virginia, and at the end of the month take a trip out west with Dad. 8 species, including:
Willow Flycatcher (lifer #17, at Canaan Valley NWR, West Va.)
Summer Tanager (in Carter Caves State Park, Kentucky)
Upland Sandpiper (near Emporia, KS--my first since my trip to Iowa in 1995)
Dickcissel (at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas)
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (first time in its usual habitat;a pair ended up in Virginia a while ago)

JULY
I finish up the Great Plains swing, then park at home for the rest of the summer. 13 species, including:
Great-tailed Grackle
Cliff Swallow
Red-headed Woodpecker (yes, they have woodpeckers in Kansas; trees, too)
White Pelican (almost in Nebraska, at Kirwin NWR)
Western Kingbird (lifer #18, also at Kirwin NWR)
Western Meadowlark (not seen since Iowa '95)
Lark Sparrow (lifer #19, on the road to Crescent Lake NWR, Nebraska)
Lark Bunting
Yellow-headed Blackbird (lifer #20, also on the road to Crescent Lake NWR)
Brewer's Blackbird
Orchard Oriole
Ring-necked Pheasant (on the way back from Crescent Lake)

AUGUST
Nothing in August. Like I said, parked.

SEPTEMBER
School starts, birding almost stops. 1 species, voice only (Barred Owl, heard from our bedroom.)

OCTOBER
School still in session. The big zilch.

NOVEMBER
I get out to Sky Meadows State Park with Mary Stevens, but it's not an especially busy month. 1 species (Golden-crowned Kinglet, which turns up at Sky Meadows and then in my yard when I get back.)

DECEMBER
I cross the line into obsession with an epic 800-mile round-trip journey to Tennessee (via Asheville, NC, to meet my friend Alan Barry) in order to log a rare Asian crane. I also get a few new birds on my trip to Savannah to visit my grandmother. 5 species:
Hooded Crane (lifer #21, at Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, TN, despite its usual Asian range)
Whooping Crane (lifer #22, two of a small flock that migrate between Wisconsin & Florida)
American Avocet (first since Bombay Hook '96--a flock in winter plumage at Savannah NWR, SC)
Tricolored Heron
Loggerhead Shrike

BONUS: arguably the worst-ever photograph of a life bird (with the possible exception of my legendarily crappy Kirtland's Warbler shot from 2010). Behold the Hooded Crane!:

Yes, you can see the charcoal-grey body and white head, but since the bird was standing at the waterside around 100 yards from the observation platform, that's about all you can see.

TOTALS:
*My life list now stands at 390 species
*I have now seen life birds in 32 of the 50 states
*I saw 22 life birds and 224 species in 2011, which is by far the largest total I've ever logged in a calendar year since I started listing birds by year back in 2004. That year I totalled my previous best, 166 species, largely by going on a January count in the Shenandoah Valley, touring South Florida with my dad in March, going to Cape May for NJ Audubon's Spring Weekend, and wrapping up the year with two Christmas counts in eastern North Carolina. This year, obviously, the trips to New England and the Great Plains were very helpful in adding new birds, but those two months of carefully watching everything that migrated through the Ithaca area (not to mention two highly concentrated days of birding in Cape May with expert assistance) really gave me the most extraordinary birding experience I've ever had. I may total more species during some future Big Year, but I cannot imagine having a more eye-opening twelve months than I've had in 2011.

And that, folks, is big.




11:24 AM

Happy holidays to all--and yes, for you Warriors out there, that does include Christmas. I'd apologize for the absence, but I think it would be better for me to just shut up and hand over my present: a link to "Not At Home," my long-promised-and-now-finally-available-online Living Bird story on Steve Kress and the Audubon Society's Seabird Restoration Project, better known as "Project Puffin." Enjoy the photos in particular,  because they are far, far better than anything I could possibly produce with a camera.

Puffins are actually perfectly capable of flight, but if it helps you feel more Christmasy, think of them as belonging on the Island of Misfit Toys ("How'd you like to be a Bird That Can't Fly? I swim.")

In our next installment: my own really bad photographs of a rare bird in the wrong hemisphere. Be here. Aloha!


2:25 PM

For many years--the mid-1970s, to be specific--one of my favorite writers has been Ursula K. Le Guin, whose various works of fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and indescribable creativity (e.g. Always Coming Home) combine thought-provoking narratives with a philosophy that has always seemed powerfully comforting to me.

Her focus on such ideas as the balance of natural forces,and the calm acceptance of change had a significant effect on my thinking, so it wasn't entirely a surprise to me when I discovered such ideas in another place: the Tao Te Ching. The work of the legendary Lao Tzu, the book was filled with brief, pithy observations about life, consciousness, and eternity, and it spoke to me in a way that no other work of holy writ ever did. I never ran out and joined a Taoist congregation--indeed, it seemed to me that Lao Tzu would have frowned on such an action--but during times of stress or uncertainty, I often found myself thinking about the book's teachings and appreciating its wisdom, just as (I eventually learned) Le Guin had.

The way that can be spoken of
is not the constant way.

Well, the last little while has definitely qualified as a time of stress and uncertainty. No fewer than four of my extended family members have been injured or taken ill in the last month, which has left me and the rest of the family feeling more than a little out of sorts (though recovery is either accomplished or on the way in all four cases). Kelly is entering the final weeks of her most demanding semester of library school yet, one in which she has not one but two courses to finish before she starts on her thesis in the spring. And of course we're dealing with the first stirrings of Empty Nest Syndrome now that both boys are away at college. Add to that the usual stuff--work, mostly--and you can see how I've found myself out of balance going into the holiday season.

But last night, having completed a reading of Kazuo Ishiguro's masterful The Remains of the Day, I found myself in need of another bedtime book, and I felt the urge to pull off the shelf a book that I realized I really needed to re-read: Le Guin's own version of the Tao Te Ching, written with the assistance of UNC professor J.P. Seaton and published in 1997. And yeah, it still spoke to me:

[T}he unwanting soul
sees what's hidden,
and the ever-hidden soul
sees only what it wants.

When I'm exercising and my heart rate rises too high, or when I'm feeling especially anxious and short of breath, I cope by taking deliberate breaths--a sort of primitive yoga. In through the nose, out through the mouth, in long and continuous movements of air--that's what helps my body get back on track. And that's what reading the Tao Te Ching does for my mind.

To bear and not to own;
to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.

I'm listening to the Roches' version of "Good King Wenceslas" just now, and the image of the page treading in the king's footsteps to get where he must go is looming large in my mind right now. As yuletide approaches, I'm very glad that some footsteps have already been pressed into the cold winter landscape for me.

Thanks and Merry Christmas to you, Ms. Le Guin. And to you, too, Old Man.


11:12 AM

As Sunday is the one day where it is illegal to hunt (in Virginia, anyway), I hauled myself out of bed before sunup this morning and hauled my scope and binoculars down to Robertson Lake. Though there were several Red-tailed Hawks in the nearby trees, and one youngish-looking Great Blue Heron, the water itself was empty of birds... except for the half-dozen Wood Ducks hugging the shore near the creek mouth.

Like I said: Calvin is a damn good birder.


8:26 AM

On dorm duty, I occasionally stop to talk with students while I'm making sure that they've got their books out and open and are using their study hall period for studying. One of the young men I'm responsible for is a talkative young fellow whom I'll call Calvin.

Cal and I have a lot of things in common, including a fondness for Carolina basketball, good Southern cooking, and birds. At the same time, our shared appreciation for birds is a drastic difference between us, as I'm fond of observing them and keeping tabs on what I see, while Cal is interested in shooting them. He's a hunter, an avid one, and there's nothing he likes better than the opportunity to blast away at waterfowl from a blind.

This might make birds seem like an unlikely basis for polite conversation between us, but in fact we don't really run into that much trouble, probably because we're two of the few people on campus who actually care what kind of bird we're looking at. For me it's a matter of intellectual and/or spiritual satisfaction, but for Cal it's entirely practical: if he shoots the wrong kind of bird, he could be arrested.

As a result, he's a very good birder, careful to note field marks and behaviors that most people (e.g., non-hunters, non-birders, the sane) simply wouldn't notice. I simply try not to bring up the events that take place after those field marks and behaviors lead him to his identification.

When I stopped by his room tonight, for example, I asked if he had seen anything interesting on the campus's new lake, which was filled last spring and has been restocked with fish and other edibles over the last few months. Cal immediately announced that he'd recently had a day where he shot eight Canada geese--not a bird I feel terribly protective about, as he well knows--and had seen a lot of other odd waterfowl: Mallards, Buffleheads, Wood Ducks...

"Wood Ducks?" I interrupted. We'll see Woodies on the nearby Rapidan River fairly regularly, but it flows through some very heavily forested land, so they're never more than a few feet from cover when they're swimming. By contrast, the new lake is out in the middle of a former cow pasture, and cover is simply not available anywhere on it. One end of the lake--the end near the blind--does have a creek running down from the nearby forest, but the trees themselves are at least thirty yards from the waterside.

"Oh, yeah," Cal insisted. The creek mouth, he pointed out, is a place where acorns from the forest's pin oaks often get washed, and a few Woodies often congregate there to feed. I was impressed. That's the kind of behavioral/geographical detail you simply won't find out about even from most serious non-hunting birders. He went on to discuss the possibility that some Black Ducks had been out on the lake as well, but they hadn't been close enough for him to nail down. And, he claimed, there had been a raft of at least thirty Ruddy Ducks on the water one morning.

"And I saw a grebe, too," Cal added. He wasn't sure about the I.D. at first, because the light wasn't very good, but the little bird swam up among the decoys to the point where Cal and his friends were getting ready to try taking a shot. Problem is, if it was a Pied-billed Grebe, it wasn't a legal game bird. What to do?

"I told them, 'I'm gonna stand up and clap my hands. If it flies, it's a duck, and if it dives, it's a grebe.'" When he rose and clapped, the bird dove for the bottom at once, and his friends were spared the ignominy of making an illegal kill. Again, I was impressed at the fact that Cal knew the habits of these birds well enough to make the identification, not to mention saving a bunch of our students from a nasty conversation with the local Fish & Wildlife officials.

I know that Cal would be unlikely to enjoy wandering the woods with binocs looking for warblers, and I'm certainly not likely to pick up a shotgun and try to bring down a Pintail. But even with our widely divergent reasons for wanting to see what's on Robertson Lake, and our equally divergent plans for what to do once we see it, I can't help but admire the passion, and the skill, and the craftsmanship with which he approaches his chosen avocation. I'm playing a different song with different words for a different audience, but I hope I'm playing mine as well as Cal is playing his.

Just don't expect an album of duets.


8:24 PM

Here are the Things, marching off to college (specifically, into Thing Two's dorm room).

They're not the only items on my list of things I'm thankful for, by any means, but yeah, they're pretty high on it.

And the lady who provided them, too, of course.

 


4:20 PM

In fact, the bare trees suggest that it's already left, though the crisp temperatures I prefer at this time of year have been a bit more inclined to hang back.

Still, I thought you'd like a look at one autumnal visitor who put in an appearance a week or two back, when the colors were still fairly bright in the mornings:




11:01 AM