(HOST) On a recent vacation along the Atlantic shore, commentator Tom Slayton spent some time watching birds. The experience was both fun – and frustrating.
(SLAYTON) Birding – or bird watching, to everyone except those who do it – is endlessly challenging. The birds always find new and interesting ways to humble us. Or perhaps I should just admit that birds always seem able to find a way to humble me, personally. They do it often enough.
Part of the difficulty of birding is that different types of birds demand radically different techniques. For example, with spring warblers, you crane your neck upward, looking for a tiny speck hopping through the upper branches of a tree. Warblers are so distinctive, wearing their springtime coat of many colors, that all you need is one quick, breathtaking look to identify them.
Shorebirds are different. Their habit is to stand fairly still, or walk slowly, out in the open. So you don’t use the quick-draw and point your binoculars technique that warblers demand. Instead, with shorebirds, you train your binos or spotting scope on them and look. And look. For minutes, maybe hours.
The problem, especially with migrating fall shorebirds, is that they all look a lot alike. So you scratch your head and peer at them, trying to figure out what bird that is, filling your scope.
Earlier this fall, I spent several hours studying sandpipers with a group of birders. It was actually quite helpful to look at them for a long time, studying wing length and leg color, and trying to decide just which sandpipers we were seeing.
After awhile, a flock of yellowlegs flew in. They’re a bigger sandpiper with – you guessed it – bright yellow legs.
"So," said our leader, "is that a greater or a lesser yellowlegs out there?"
I guessed it was a greater, and was of course wrong. When am I going to learn to shut my mouth around shorebirds?
The bird’s bill was long, but not long enough. It was a lesser yellowlegs. And I had identified myself, once again, as a blue-capped idiot.
I went on to a week of chasing shorebirds around Cape Cod. I made more mistakes, humbled myself repeatedly, and saw lots of birds. It was great.
One of the really striking things about shorebirds is watching them fly. When they take to the air, they are instantly transformed.
Feeding in the marsh, they are prosaic: portly little birds with odd-shaped bills, poking in the mud. But when they fly, they suddenly become poetry, even the smallest of them. Most shorebirds are world-class flyers – they have to be to complete their huge cross-hemispheric migrations. They have sharp-pointed sweptback wings and can swoop and turn with unbelievable speed.
To watch a flock of plovers or dunlins zoom and bank and soar above the marsh or crashing surf is thrilling. They fill the air with briskly coordinated grace. They stop time for me, and express, without trying to, the beauty and mystery of life on this lovely planet.
I am humbled again, watching them — even if I can’t quite make out just which birds they might actually be.
Tom Slayton is editor-emeritus of Vermont Life magazine.