Filling my little 20 year old, 20 mpg truck to full, 2/3 of a tank, cost $31. This is 1/2 day's pay, net. I may have to get out of my comfort zone and actually go find and identify some birds, even, heaven forbid, some little brown jobs, and stop reporting on the same birds, counting on them and my comfortable circuits to provide story and backstory. Before I drive ruts in the roads and begin to loop posts.
This most certainly does not mean I will fail to report every raptor I see.
But I drove to Marion this morning, and later to Elwood, combined over 75 miles, and there was nothing.
By now you know you can see hundreds of birds any day you spend a couple hours driving.
So now it's time to change perspective.
I did see an Eastern Kingbird on a wire, and it briefly flared. I have seen at least a hundred Eastern Kingbirds this summer and this was first time I saw the "distinctive" white band at the end of the tail.
The point is, that white terminal tail band is a definitive identification in my favorite ID Guide. What that same guide doesn't make clear is the Eastern Kingbird is the only gray over, white under, bird of that size in Indiana.
If it isn't supposed to be here, it probably isn't, which makes good range maps indispensable for identification. It still surprises me the Petersen guides don't have range maps on the description pages, and I don't own the general Petersen guides for that reason.
Even the most descriptive words, photos, and drawings can't account for ambient light, distance, perspective, and the real chance that, like the white band on our kingbirds, the identifying trait in any of your guides isn't what you observe as the most obvious characteristic of your bird.
That little brown job with the black bib is a House Sparrow. If you look in the guides, there is a Black Chinned Sparrow, a Black Throated Sparrow, and a Harris's Sparrow, but only Passer domesticus, our House Sparrow, is found east of the Mississippi River.
There are a lot of house sparrows, and they are largely scorned, and mostly ignored.
Too bad. Because a bird watcher should watch birds, not just identify them, which is "birding", tallying species. If your interest in birds is to chalk up a list, my humble efforts are a waste of your time.
Watch the birds.
I am in awe of raptors. American Kestrels are remarkable for their ability to hover, to hang in the air, and for their call, killy killy. And a sad fact is I have briefly seen the former, and never heard the latter.
Instead of cursing sparrows for draining expensive blends from your feeders, watch them for a while.
Entertainment absolutely guaranteed.
About 50 years ago I watched two sparrows in a tail-chase fly between a roof-drain pipe and the wall, 2" apart. These little birds are 6 1/4" long, with a 9 1/2" wingspan, and both passed without a brush, a bobble, a notice. An inch apart.
These little rockets are a half-foot long, with three-quarters of a foot wingspan, and weigh less than an ounce, organs, bones, feathers, and all.
Feel free to say 'Wow'.
I took a familiar drive this evening and saw a kestrel, on wire just past the first pole of a link up a lane.
And, later, I went past the chained-dog house, except there were no dogs, which means, I so hope, the dogs are out while the residents work, and they are all brought in to the house soon after the "owners" return.
Kestrel Alley earned a visit, and perspective. "The American Kestrel", by Roland Wauer, says "The size of the kestrel's winter territory also varies with geography. In Michigan, four individuals utilized forty-three square miles each, and in Illinois five individuals utilized an average of thirty-seven square miles each."
Note that each and consider my 4 kestrels on wire in less than a mile. My (uneducated) guess is this is a pair and two youngsters.
There is an old saw, the more you learn, the less you know.
So it is with me and kestrels.