I have been looking forward to our second field test, which is scheduled for Saturday December 7; the schedule says the target is "Ducks".
Ducks? Hell, ducks are easy! Well, except for female ducks. And ducks in eclipse plumage (that's birdspeak for non-breeding plumage, where males and females kind of look alike). And ducks in flight. And dabbling ducks with their heads submerged, butts skyward. Or diving ducks that dive before you can get a good look at them.
But really, ducks in winter, coming into their breeding plumage, all just sitting there on the water? What could be easier?
Certainly not gulls. Or flycatchers. Or anything soaring overhead. Or any number of small hyperactive birds, the kinds my friend Leann calls "tweety birds".
So I'm stoked. Of all the field tests, this is going to be the easiest. In testing, we need to identify 100 birds by sight. This test has the potential to already catapult me over the 50% mark.
Oh my.
So I'm stoked.
But then the weather here gets cold. Bitter cold. Face-freezing and toe-numbing cold. Lung-searing cold. "Sorry, I know we were supposed to get together but it's too damn cold" cold. AAA-best-week-of-the-year-jump-starting-cars cold. Wearing my baggiest jeans so I can put on long johns underneath them just to go to the store cold.
I'm certain that the test will be canceled. Or postponed. Or something.
Especially when I get up on test morning and see the weather service temperature: -8.
That's MINUS 8. That's EIGHT-BELOW-EFFING-ZERO. That's too damn cold to hold a test. Surely, they won't hold the test.
But they do.
So I have a choice. Go out in the too-freaking-cold-for-words cold, and stand around in the too-freaking-cold-for-words cold for hours on end while trying to write bird names with numb fingers and a frozen brain, all while worrying about how I'm going to end up in the hospital with pneumonia and then who will feed my cats?
Or blow the thing off.
The first option just seems stupid to me. And I keep hearing Forrest Gump say "Stupid is as stupid does".
So I blow the thing off.
My friend Leann says, "you may not have passed the AMB Test, but you passed the Intelligence Test".
The only problem is that I'm so angry about this turn of events that I write (and delete) long blog posts, vilifying people and organizations and, pretty much, everyone who birds (or ever birded or will ever bird) in Colorado. I can't get past the missed opportunities. Mallards and Northern Shovelers and Teals and Scaups and Buffleheads and Grebes and Ruddy Ducks and all those other fabulous ducks. It eats me up.
Then my friend Melissa calls. Melissa is the friend responsible for all of this birding nonsense. And photography nonsense. Come to think of it, she was responsible for the marathoning nonsense, too.
When I whine some more about the missed Duck Test, she tells me that life is too short. I need to let it go. Really, in the grand scheme of things, what does it really matter?
And then she starts to talk about the birds we'll see when I go visit her in Florida for Christmas.
Oh.
My.
Birds I've never seen before that she guarantees me: Black-and-white Warblers. Dunlins. Short-billed Dowitchers. Nanday Parakeets. Birds that I've seen before, but not this year: Mottled Ducks. Wood Storks. Sandwich Terns. Black Skimmers. Birds that I've seen and photographed, but from far away in lousy conditions, that she tells me I'll get close to: Burrowing Owls. Long-billed Curlews. Pileated Woodpeckers. Birds that she can't guarantee, but tells me are good bets: Snowy Plovers. Piping Plovers. Red Knots.
All of this, and more. The Brown Thrasher at her feeder. The Tufted Titmice who land on her camera lens! The Sedge Wrens and Marsh Wrens. The Swamp Sparrows. The Northern Cardinals at her feeders. The Painted Buntings, the Florida Scrub-Jays, the chance at seeing Northern Gannets, at least from a distance.
Oh, and the punchline: it's been in the 70s and 80s, sunny, beautiful.
Did someone say something about ducks?
