Constance, just wanted to say I really enjoyed your piece about being a discouraged birder :) I can hardly count myself as a birder because as a busy working mom and fearful driver and generally tuckered-out person I don't really ever go out birding per se, though I do take the opportunity wherever I am to look for birds and keep an eye on the ones in my garden and neighborhood...and imagine perhaps that when my child is older I'll have more of an opportunity to dive into this interest. I do encourage her to be interested, too, but right now she tends to think it's just something "wacky" her mom is into and therefore it is something to be viewed as simply amusing.
Anyway, often discouragement rules--and that's even before getting on a trail and missing the sighting! And then there are the times I think I've made good field notes, but then, miles and many hours away from the bird, have no luck identifying it in the books.
But the thrill of even the smallest success does make up for it. For me, seeing my first marsh wren while on the Sammamish River trail, killing time while my child took a riding lesson, was terribly exciting. I was glad not to be so jaded as the experienced birder who was on the one and only birding-group walk I ever took (back east on Long Island) who waved his hand dismissively at a pond full of black ducks and said in disgust, "Junk. All junk."
As for birds--just the usual juncos, chickadees, and our resident Bewick's wren fluttering around our soggy yard, but it's fun to watch them (the cats watch them, too--strictly from indoors!!-- but with a different gleam in their eyes). On the one warm, sunny day in the last week or so, there were about 5 or 6 chickadees flittering about in the trees and squabbling, calling "chickadee" at each other--nobody was "fighting," but if it was part of a mixed winter flock, it sure looked like a hint of spring's hormonally induced bickering! There are also the resident crows, plus a lot of pigeons and gulls in the neighborhood lately (Ballard-Phinney).
Christina
cwilsdon at earthlink net Seattle