Hey tweets, I must have taken up where all you other birders left off,
because I got to Crockett Lake yesterday around 4 p.m. and stayed until the
light turned so red that I could easily have transformed a western
sandpiper into our girl. No sign of anything unusual, although the
peregrine mentioned by others did make a fly-by, which was a thrill.

Ian Paulson asked if not seeing a rarity still put one in the doldrums.
With my legs still smarting from crashing through the field of thistles to
get to the Crockett Lake mudflats to see what I could have easily seen at
the Montlake Fill with a lot less pain and aggravation, my answer is,...no
way. I admit to grumpiness but not to boredom. Sure, I would have been high
as a kite if I had seen the curlew sandpiper, and no, I wasn't just as
thrilled to see a few dowitchers and common peeps. But as several tweeters
have pointed out, there is plenty of bird life happening all over. So I
can't really think of the summer as the doldrums, even if I wish I were
seeing spectacular rarities.

Maybe the summer "doldrums" could be characterized more as a peaceful time
to bird, a time when I can relax and get to know individuals through the
little doings of their days. For example, I very much enjoy seeing the
common yellowthroat and the marsh wren who live near Cinnamon Teal pond at
the Fill. They positively detest each other. When they're not calling each
other names from the safety of the cattails, they're chasing each other and
trying to get in a good peck. I also like watching the juvenile towhees who
live near the wedding rock, as they gradually figure out that towhees
should spend a good deal of time teasing birders by calling continuously
from hidden brush and popping into view for just a nanosecond.

I guess how you interpret your experience depends on how you define birding
pleasure. Roger Tory Peterson talked about this. His view was that any kind
of birding was great if you yourself thought it was great. Just because he
liked painting unique bird portraits, writing and publishing books loved by
millions of people, finding 7,000-plus species, being invited to
participate in world-class birdathons and generally doing everything in his
power to further the whole field of ecology doesn't diminish the pleasure
my dad felt in throwing out a handful of birdseed every morning for the
Gambel's quail and black-throated sparrows who waited for it. On the other
hand, my dad was a guy who ate the exact same thing for breakfast for more
than 80 years: two eggs,toast and a tomato. Go figure. - Connie