Perhaps I am an exception to the rule, in that my two benchmark birds are both exotic. The first bird that I ever remember seeing was HUGE! It seemed to dwarf the fence post it was sitting on, along the old Grapevine Highway, as we crossed the mountains towards Bakersfield. I was very young, 6 to 8 years old, and asked my father what that bird was. It was a California Condor (oddly enough, my only other sighting of a condor was of one soaring above that same area, in 1975). Though it didn't turn me on to birds at the time, it did fill me with awe.

My second was a hammerkop, resident on the pond where I lived in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early sixties. I was fascinated by the bird's shape, the monstrous nest it lived in and it's general fearlessness. Of course the local tribe had some wonderful myths about the Lightning Bird too. I finally started paying more attention to birds then. I think I just about have them figured out now...

Marvin Cooper
Seattle
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20000329/b757dbbf/attachment.htm