Birds of a feather really do flock together
| Monday, Dec 05 2011 09:29 PM
Last Updated Monday, Dec 05 2011 09:32 PM
I'm not leaving this car for a coot. Coots are a dime a dozen. I may be new to the birding fraternity, but I have standards, even if they are new standards. Recently I went birding with my parents at the Kern National Wildlife Refuge. Was it on my top 10 destinations wish list? No, but I wanted to spend the day with them, and they couldn't wait to unpack their binoculars and open their birding guides.
"This is the kind of thing you do when you get old," Dad said about halfway through our tour, most of which took place at 5 mph, scouring pond after pond through the windows of the Subaru.
At the beginning of our three-hour stroll through the refuge, which is about an hour and 9 minutes northwest of downtown Bakersfield, I was a pill. Could we be driving any slower? How do I get these binoculars to work so I am seeing something other than my eyebrows or the back of Dad's head because he was sitting in the passenger seat, blocking my view?
"Look, a northern shoveler," yelled my mom. "Over there."
Over where? "There" is a large geographical area and includes the pond, the Temblor Range and Mount McKinley.
After I had missed a half-dozen shovelers, a bufflehead, two cinnamon teals, a northern harrier and a pied-billed grebe, I concluded that birding was like trying to see a meteorite. In a group, one person sees it and the rest pretend they have.
I saw the coots. I didn't need binoculars to see the coots. I could have seen them with one eye closed, my back turned and standing on my head.
However, the less common birds were proving elusive. I lacked three things: a birding heart (you have to be fond of the winged creatures), patience and the willingness to submit to the glacial-like pace necessary to scan a pond discerningly enough to look beyond the 100 coots, which may be hiding the delicious cinnamon teal that looks good enough to put in the smoker and serve for Christmas dinner.
"Bird-watching is like eating peanuts," Dad said. "Once you start, you can't stop."
Wait a minute. I put on the brakes, stopped the car and looked at this man who claimed to be my father. He was 86. Had he gone around the bend when I wasn't looking?
Fifteen minutes later, I joined him around that bend. The sun was shining, it was a beautiful fall day with not a breath of wind. It was hard to hold on to a bad attitude.
"Do you see that cinnamon teal, at the edge of the rushes?" Mom asked.
I cranked the $500 binoculars, sweeping back and forth across the pond, and what do you know: There was the prettiest brown duck I'd ever seen sitting among a throng of black coots.
"I got it," I yelled.
That's when you know you are a goner. When you use the phrase, "I got it," you start to think about Craigslist and binoculars and all the friends you are going to tell.
Yes, I was a goner. My heart had slowed, blood pressure caved and now I was shouting out birds. I spotted two red-tailed hawks and a northern harrier before my parents, not that birding is competitive (read "The Big Year)."
I got it, I got it. And now I get it.
We were on fire. Flying like Icarus toward the bird-specked sun: ruddy ducks, a Cooper's hawk, killdeer, common moorhens, a long-billed dowitcher and a black-necked stilt. I was a coot away from discovering a new species.
On the way home, we stopped by the Pixley National Wildlife Refuge in order to see the sandhill cranes. There were thousands of birds in the sky two miles to the west, but we couldn't tell whether they were cranes. It was dark and almost time for the meteorites.
These are the opinions of Herb Benham, not necessarily those of The Californian. Email him at hbenham@bakersfield.com.
