Hey tweets, In the 1998 film, "What Dreams May Come," Robin Williams plays
an Orpheus-like character who is tragically killed and goes to heaven. As
portrayed by the screenwriter, heaven is a place where you can imagine
yourself to be in any landscape, inhabit any body, do anything. All you have
to do is think a scenario, and it happens. (As an aside, in one truly
breath-taking scene, Williams imagines himself occupying one of the
paintings that his artist wife restores, and as he walks, the real flowers
in heaven turn into squishy oil-painting flowers by his wife - the movie is
a must-see for this scene alone.)

I was contemplating this idea of heaven yesterday as I sat on my campstool
on the dike at Spencer Island. Gray clouds obscured the sun, and spates of
rain threatened to wash me out. The wind was coming from the west, which
channeled the ripe smell of sewage over the estuary, mixing with the already
foul smell of rotting vegetation. The ducks had fled as soon as I showed up,
on account of the fact that hunting season is still in full swing. As a
matter of fact, I met a hunter with a shotgun and a couple of missing teeth
- he said he had come to kill at least two mallards for dinner. His outlook
on life was definitely at the practical end of the scale.

All in all, anyone who thought Spencer Island was anything but a hellhole
yesterday would have been a nutcase - or a birder. I fear I am both because
I felt like I was in heaven. The scene of distant ducks floating on
mirror-smooth ponds, quacking contentedly to each other let me sink softly
into peacefulness. All my cares drifted away on the wisps of mist that rose
from the marsh. A marsh wren began chittering at me from the depths of a
grass tussock, but which one? I couldn't tell. I decided to become as still
as a bittern until the little guy, knowing how impatient humans are, would
be fooled into thinking I had gone. It took 15 minutes of patience - a flash
for a bittern - but eventually the marsh wren was lulled into hopping out
into the open. I was rewarded with a view of a fluff of toffee and cinnamon,
dramatic white stripes on the back, beady eyes fixed on an unlucky bug.

I had gone to Spencer Island because it is one of the most reliable spots in
western Washington to see Wilson's snipe and American bitterns. I figured I
would plant myself on the dike and just wait for the show to begin. Of
course, it never did. No snipe, no bitterns. On the other hand, as I sat
absorbed in nature, a streak of gray and white flashed by. I leaped to my
feet, clapped my binoculars to my eyes and saw a NORTHERN SHRIKE settle into
a little tree a few yards away. The sun came out and cast a spotlight onto
the bird's pale gray back, deepening the contrast of the black mask on its
face. The shrike perched for a few minutes, wagged its tail up and down a
few times, and then disappeared, never to return.

In the distance, I could see two birders turning back to their car, scopes
slung over their shoulders. They had not walked out as far as I had, and so
they never saw the bird that I did. I thought about yelling and semaphoring
my arms to attract their attention, but I remembered a piece of advice
surfer Ricky Young had given me many years ago. He said, "If you do
something, something happens. If you do nothing, nothing happens." Or, to
quote Debbie Shearwater, "If you snooze, you lose." The two birders who
turned back had made their choice; they must abide by it.

For me, the essence of birding is just this: Every choice has a consequence,
but there are no guarantees.

How many times have I set the clock for an early wakeup, only to groan in
the morning and wrestle with an overwhelming desire to roll over and go back
to sleep? But Ricky's words usually sound off in my mind, and I force myself
to get up and get out. Unfortunately, sometimes Ricky lets me down. I don't
see the birds I want to. Occasionally, I don't see any birds at all.

I am never happy when this happens. Oh, I may put on a happy face and tell
my husband how much fun it was to get out into nature even if we saw nothing
(i.e., no birds). But inside, I am crabby crabby crabby. However, I have to
admit that it is this aspect of birding which puts me into heaven.

How would it be if Robin Williams' version of heaven were true? I can
imagine myself wishing to see a Bachman's warbler, and poof! there it is.
Too easy? Maybe in that heaven of fulfilled wishes, I could imagine myself
*not* finding a bird sometimes. But I would always know that that was a
false construct, and I could call the bird to mind at any time I wanted.
Where is the challenge in that? Where is the uncertainty, the possibility of
failure, the transcendence of success? Where is the luck and the skill?

Seeing the shrike yesterday was a piece of luck, made possible because I
made the effort to get out there. Even more gratifying, however, was the
sighting I made of a pair of CINNAMON TEAL, the male in breeding plumage. I
spotted him as I was scanning for the invisible bitterns that I just knew
were littering the area. As my binoculars passed over one pond, I saw a
bright-rust ball that caught my attention. When I zeroed in on the oddity, I
made out the teal, bill tucked into his back and his rotund crop facing me
straight on. He was by no means obvious. It took a little skill to winkle
him out of the reeds. "Ah," I thought smugly, "maybe I really am a bird
master after all." It was balm to an ego that had been just been bruised by
my uncertainty in identifying whether some scaups on the dike were lesser or
greater. The day was a fabulous mix of luck, both good and bad, and skill -
or lack thereof.

The earth we live on today, right at this moment, may not be perfect. But it
is better than any vision I can possibly imagine. Spencer Island may stink,
but it is my idea of heaven, and it is so because of birding.

FYI, here are all the birds I saw yesterday:
pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern pintail
northern shoveler
cinnamon teal
ruddy duck
ring-necked duck
greater scaup
lesser scaup
bufflehead
American coot
ring-billed gull
mew gull (seen at Green Lake on the way north)
California gull (seen at Green Lake on the way north)
glaucous-winged gull
northern harrier
Cooper's hawk
red-tailed hawk
rock pigeon
Anna's hummingbird (seen at Green Lake on the way north)
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
marsh wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
American robin
northern shrike
European starling
spotted towhee (heard)
song sparrow
Lincoln's sparrow
red-winged blackbird
house sparrow
American goldfinch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com