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From: "David Chelimer" <chelimer at earthlink.net>

I hadn't intended to write about my benchmark bird. But in early May I'll
be going back to The Big Apple in time for spring migration in Central Park,
and thinking about the upcoming trip brings back fond memories of how it
began with me.

A lifelong New Yorker, I was surprised to hear that the seemingly sane and
pleasant man about to marry my cousin was a bird-watcher. I was amused: the
only person I'd heard of with this hobby was the eccentric mail man on the
Fibber McGee and Molly radio show iof the 1940's. Somehow I got convinced to
join my cousin-to-be in Central Park early (much earlier than this then
bachelor was used to) on a Saturday in May. I had been lent a pair of
binocs a week earlier, so I was fairly comfortable using them that morning,
though most of the birds I'd practiced on until then them were of
the human variety.

We hadn't been in the park half an hour when we saw a group of about twenty
people gathered on one side of a large beech tree, all looking up through
their glasses and saying things like, "There his is, at about two o'clock,
just to the right of the dead branch," and, "Are you absolutely sure that's
what he is? I didn't get a good enough look yet," and repeated calls of,
"Who's got Peterson? I've got to see the picture." With great patience, my
guide for the day told me what I was looking for. A SMALL bird? I'd always
assumed that the good ones were big, like the Great Blues and loons and
Pileateds I knew from summer camp. So that when I saw my benchmark bird I
think I would have been disappointed, had it not been for the incredible
and infectious excitement the people at that tree showed about seeing that
little bird. And that's how it came about that my benchmark bird arose from
my first and last look at a BREWSTER'S WARBLER.