Hey tweets, You've heard about those training sessions for FBI agents, where
a class is sitting soporifically listening to a lecturer drone on about some
esoteric matter of search and seizure, when all of a sudden, a criminal
bursts in, kills the lecturer and then exits. The class is abuzz; they've
never seen a lecture like this before. Then the "dead" lecturer stands up
and asks the students to describe what they saw. Much to their chagrin, no
two students can agree on any of the details of the incident or the
perpetrator.

Well, I've always believed that if a birder were in that class, by golly
you'd get a detailed and accurate description of the height, weight, hair
color, clothing and behavior of both the criminal and the victim. After all,
birders can ID a warbler by seeing a little flash of yellow throat and
breast, white eye-ring, dull back, no wing bars, and presto, it's a
Nashville. Awed onlookers say, "But you only saw it for a nanosecond." Yes,
but what else has that combination? It's simple. We see things that give us
very brief looks, and if we don't want to frustrate ourselves into
Tums-eating fanatics, we learn to notice the details.

I got a little reinforcement of my theory yesterday when John and I were
driving through Tokeland. We spotted Irene Potter on the roadside and rolled
down a window to ask what she was seeing. "I think I saw a tropical
kingbird," she replied. Hot dog. We drove down the road a few more feet to
turn around and join her, when I spotted a house roof with flames licking
out the top near the chimney. "It's a fire, John," I said.

He slammed on the brakes and went running out the door, shouting, "Fire!
Fire"! (noting later that that was always something he had wanted to do;
just one more reward of birding, I guess). We got the woman inside to call
the fire department, then John grabbed a garden house and began spraying the
roof with water. Soon the neighbors showed up to help and had the fire under
control by the time the volunteer fire brigade arrived. A good thing, too,
because they took about 15 minutes or more to get there (being a birder, we
did not take note of the time passing so I'm not going to vouch for that bit
of data; as you all know, we birders can manage to stand and stare at
meaningless shimmering heat waves for hours as we try to pick out that one
shorebird whose eyebrow is slightly different than its look-alike cousins -
*and* we're happy as clams while we're doing it).

After the fire was all out, one of the fire officials told me, "You know, a
birder saved that house and everyone inside it, too. If that fire had gotten
going, the whole house might have gone up. That first three to five minutes
of a fire are critical." I didn't tell him our names; I figured that, like
the Lone Ranger, we were better off staying anonymous. Now the community of
Tokeland has something else (besides our supporting dollars) to be glad of
when birders show up. Maybe we should all get little fake silver binoculars
and leave them behind when we do good deeds.

In the midst of all this hullabaloo, Irene's tropical kingbird returned to
its tree to gaze calmly at us. What a great bird. I was so happy to see it,
since I've always been jealous of the Ocean Shores' tropical kingbirds that
appear so regularly every winter. The Westport side should have its share of
kingbirds, too, but never does. As a person whose origins are deeply rooted
in the blue-collar world, I'm glad whenever Westport/Tokeland can produce a
rarity.

John and I were in the area from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon.
Here is a list of everything we saw:

common loon (numerous; several still in partial breeding plumage)
western grebe
pied-billed grebe
horned grebe (one still in partial breeding plumage - a great sight)
brown pelican (two in Westport)
double-crested cormorant
pelagic cormorant
great blue heron
snow goose
Canada goose (including a little flock of cacklers)
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern pintail
surf scoter
bufflehead
red-breasted merganser
American coot
black-bellied plover
marbled godwit
Hudsonian godwit
whimbrel
willet
greater yellowlegs
long-billed dowitcher
dunlin
ring-billed gull
California gull
mew gull
western gull
glaucous-winged gull
bald eagle
red-tailed hawk
merlin
rock pigeon
belted kingfisher
northern flicker
downy woodpecker
tropical kingbird
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
American robin
varied thrush
European starling
spotted towhee
fox sparrow
dark-eyed junco
red-winged blackbird
house finch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com