 I need help. In the summer of 1991, my wife, Denise, dangled a bird feeder from an innocent crape myrtle tree in our backyard, and my life was thereby inextricably altered. I acquired an obsession. It was an insidious, creeping thing which was too slow to see coming. It began as a simple, unobtrusive amusement with fussing house sparrows and boisterous blue jays at the feeder. My knowledge of birds was rather limited: Blue jays are blue, cardinals are red, and sparrows are plentiful. After a few weeks, I found myself recording in an unused address booklet the number of mourning doves, cardinals, and cowbirds (listed in those days as blackbirds) which visited the feeder while I sipped morning coffee on the deck. |
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| One day at summer's end, a ruddy-brown bird with spotted breast settled in our compost pile and began nosing and kicking around in it as if searching for a needle in a haystack. I hadn't a clue of the bird's species and went instantly to purchase a field guide. It was the kind with flash-lighted birds in whatever plumage and from whatever angle the photographer happened to capture them. Using it was difficult -- many birds appearing confusingly similar to me -- but after studying the photographs and conferring on the accuracy of our memories, Denise and I agreed on a brown thrasher. |
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| That was about the extent of our bird watching in the summer and fall of 1991. It was largely limited to the somewhat predictable, backyard variety. There were occasional adventurous journal entries recorded following a walk or bicycle ride to nearby Audubon Park: "black and white woodpecker seen on phone pole at corner of State and Laurel Sts." or "saw approximately forty black-crowned night herons nesting on Oschner Island in Audubon Park" (A passing jogger had told me what the herons were). During winter, I faithfully reported the comings and goings of pine siskins to the large live oak in front of the house. On a visit to my brother's home in the "country", north of Lake Pontchartrain, I authoritatively pointed out several siskins in a tangle of brush on an uncleared part of his property. Trouble was, after about two hundred siskins I figured out they weren't siskins at all, but yellow-rumped warblers. |
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| In early spring of 1992, following directions overheard in the local wild-bird store while buying seed for my wife's feeder, we travelled forty miles east of our home in New Orleans to Highway 90 as it passes through the Honey Island Swamp, near the Louisiana-Mississippi border. From the rear steps of a phone- company shack perched on the edge of the great swamp, we saw, in a stand of cypress trees, a rookery of herons and egrets containing scores of birds. But west of those elegant birds, a couple of hundred yards (the information gathered eavesdropping was on the mark), in the canopy of an ancient cypress tree were the regal birds we were there to see. Perched near a Volkswagen-sized nest was a bald eagle indifferently supervising two near-fledged eaglets as they hopped and flapped and hovered over the nest, testing new flight feathers. |
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| The eagle excursion was the first time I went anywhere beyond, literally, a walk in the park to look for birds. After this spectacle, careful introspection may have revealed what was happening to me, but I think I was already hooked and too far gone to stop and reflect. |
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| If my new interest could be then fairly described as a preoccupation, it burst forth into full-bloomed obsession in mid-April, south of Pensacola, on Santa Rosa Island. Denise and I planned to golf, sunbathe, and forget about our respective offices for four days. We took along our binoculars to watch the gulls and shorebirds from the balcony of the rented condominium. |
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| Whenever I travel for "R and R", I get too excited about being away to do either. As expected, I arose before dawn on the first morning at the beach and had three or four hours to kill before my wife would awaken. On a whim and armed with binoculars, I drove to Fort Pickens at the west end of the island. Fort Pickens, situated within the Gulf Islands National Seashore, is surrounded by acres of pinewoods, scrublands, and marshes. I arrived at first light when everything still looked as if it were filmed in black and white. Soon, things took color, and I began to hear unfamiliar birdsongs. I saw movement in a scrub oak and tried to find it through the field glasses. No luck. Suddenly, I saw a black-eyed Susan fly into marshbank reeds. In the excitement, I forgot I had binoculars, and lightly moved in search of a view. Close by water's edge was a bird, not a flower, only colored as one, bright yellow with black head and neck and yellow mask to match its body. It flitted away, leaving me slack-jawed and wondering what I had seen and whether my wife could ever be convinced of my discovery. |
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| As the sun rose, I noticed little birds everywhere -- on the outermost branches of oaks, in low brush, and on the sand amid the sea oats. My elation was tempered by an effort to mentally catalogue colors or stripes or anything that might hold in memory. To me, these were mystery birds, wonder birds, and my frustration was growing. As I headed back to the car and the condominium to drag Denise out of bed so that I could share this magic (and have a witness), a lady approached from down a trail. It looked as if binoculars were affixed permanently to the front of her head. Near me, she lowered her glasses and asked, "Have you seen anything interesting?" |
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| Nonchalant as a cat, I answered, "I saw a hawk." Her friendly gaze turned to puzzlement; the binoculars again became a facial feature and she slowly moved away. |
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| I worked my way in her direction for a time, until I was near enough, and said, "I'm very new at this. I've seen birds I can't identify." |
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| "Oh, well," she said, offering a knowing smile, "it takes a little time. Look, there's a palm warbler; they feed near the ground. And over there is a prothonotary warbler; isn't he a sight. In the tree just there, that's a Tennessee warbler... and a black and white warbler, you'll find them working the bark of trunks and large branches... and there's a Kentucky warbler...and a worm-eating warbler... and a red-eyed vireo... and a ruby- crowned kinglet... and a blue grosbeak.... and a scarlet tanager... and a ..." (And yes, the feathered flower they call hooded warbler). |
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| Later, she told me she was Sharon Nixon, full-time birder. She became my teacher. Before she and her husband unplugged the R.V. and moved on to the next park, wildlife refuge, or birding hot-spot, she generously spent two days leading Denise and me around every hammock, over every trail, and past every marsh on the west end of Santa Rosa Island -- pointing and identifying and teaching.
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| She was an obsession-monger. She was the sealer of my fate. |
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| Since that springtime of amazements, my single field guide has grown into twenty books on birds. I've borrowed a like number of volumes about birds and birding from the library of Tulane University. I've joined the National Audubon Society. I've subscribed to two periodicals devoted to birding. I've begun saving for binoculars I can't afford. I've convinced Denise to awaken early on several Saturday mornings (an unnatural act in her book) to accompany me on birding day-trips. I've birded alone on the remaining Saturday mornings. I've surely offended two different sets of friends in whose summer homes on the Mississippi coast I was a guest by sneaking out at dawn to bird for hours and returning after breakfast dishes were washed and put away. I've begun saving for a spotting scope I can't afford. I've started a list. I've had more than a single disagreement with Denise about my birding from behind the wheel of a car doing sixty-five. I've acquired two hummingbird feeders and built a platform feeder. I've become hopelessly, totally, clinically, blissfully, permanently obsessed. I need help. |