When my nephew was born in Odessa, Texas, I sent him a National Geographic
field guide as a baby present. My little sister, his mom, started him
early using it to look at birds. I'm not sure how strongly it took with
him, but it certainly did take with her. I visited her paint horse ranch
in Oklahoma a couple of years ago and found her struggling to look at the
birds in her 5-acre "backyard" with two pairsof binocs, one that wouldn't
focus at all (but was stuck roughly at the distance of her feeder), and the
other with one side working but the other side totally messed up. So I
sent her a pair of decent compact binocs. This week, on my nephew's 20th
birthday, she called in the middle of the day to tell me she had found a
new yard bird. She was almost sure it was a summer tanager. I sang the
song to her over the phone, and she said "YES, YES, THAT'S IT!!!", almost
squealing like a teenager.

Once started, it never stops.

Mary Ann Chapman
Seattle

At 03:24 PM 5/21/2005, Gene Kridler wrote:
>Back in 1929 when I was a little squirt ten years old, I saw a male
>Scarlet Tanager perched in a Lilac bush nearby. Voila, I was bitten by
>birds. A few years later, ahem, I was bitten by albatrosses, boobies,
>hawks, etc. in my work as a wildlife biologist. Oh, yes, also puked on
>when banding albatross. And when walking through thousands of Sooty Terns
>and Bonin Island Petrels in nesting colonies, I was thankful that cows
>didn't fly. Lots of pages in my bird book.
>
>Gene Kridler
>Squirm-er-Sequim, WA
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