Subject: More Benchmarks & News Trib article
Date: Mar 29 20:18:39 2000
From: MBlanchrd at aol.com - MBlanchrd at aol.com


In a message dated 03/29/2000 7:33:40 PM Pacific Standard Time,
newboldwildlife at netscape.net writes:

<< The popularity of the benchmark bird thread must hold some lesson >>

It has been a popular one, hasn't it? And while I admit that I started it
merely to get people talking about the WHY they started birding, I realize
now that you are right, there IS a lesson to be learned.
Until I ran out of time, I was keeping a list of the birds people wrote was
their benchmark. With only a few exceptions, (maybe three), NONE were what I
would term "exotic". Virtually everyone's benchmark bird was a bird that we
think of as common, every day birds...robins. Bluejays. (ok, not here, but
back east). Juncos, chickadees, flickers, killdeer...birds we see everyday
and, I'll bet, summarily dismiss as "everyday backyard birds." What once
was a great mystery is now mundane.

But when we first saw our benchmark bird and that question first lit up our
minds...that being "What bird is that?" it also opened a door into a
wonderful exploration of the natural world around us. It fired our curiousity
and leads us on further and further, opening passions for certain species and
dismissal of others. Is there a propensity, an innateness for this in some of
us and not others?

I believe so....a couple years ago we were visiting my in-laws in Back in
the Woods So Far They Have To Pipe Sunshine In, Minnesota. My in laws have
Great Grey Owls perch on their balcony railing in the winter, bears routinely
destroy Mom's hummingbird feeders and loons call all summer long.
And yet as I walked along their dirt road with my sister-in-law, pointing out
birds everywhere...waxwings, tanagers, goldfinches, warblers of many sorts,
she said, "How do you do that? How do you know all these birds? I've lived
here for years and never knew we had so many birds."
Did I introduce her to birding? Did she discover that inner drive to discover
"what's that bird?"?". No. She never did, merely was appreciative at my
"skill" at seeing birds that had lived around her all her life.
It's innate, I think. Some got it, some don't. I'm glad I have it, doing
something like knitting or crochet would drive me insane. Although my feet
wouldn't get wet, I wouldn't get mosquito- or frost-bitten, and the equipment
is a hell of a lot cheaper than a good pair of 'nocs.

Michelle
MBlanchrd at aol.com
Oly, WA