How We Started Birding

My wife Sharon and I started birding on Mothers' Day 1995, at Sharon's request. We were 51 years old. We took our ten-year-old-but-never-used bird book ("Golden's", although we switched when a bird-bander at Pt. Reyes called it "not THAT book!" in response to our question about why a bird didn't look like its picture) and went to Point Lobos, near Carmel, California, having driven down from our home in San Jose. One of Sharon's friends and her husband had for several years gone on bird photography camping trips, and Sharon liked the aspects of togetherness, being outdoors and getting exercise, in addition to the fun of seeing and identifying new birds. I was a little reluctant ("Birdwatchers are weenies," I told her), but agreed to go.

To my great surprise, it was lots of fun. I like challenges and solving mysteries (being a software test engineer) and making lists. Seeing a new bird, finding it in the book, identifying it, and then adding it to our list were all fun, and each new bird was a new accomplishment. This day, we put five birds in our life list: Brandt's Cormorant, with his blue throat pouch; California Gull; Scrub Jay; American Crow and Dark-eyed Junco. And it rained.

We had discovered the hobby of a lifetime. We both loved it, we could go on RV trips, and I could make lists on my computer. We could spend time together at a hobby we shared - something we've been looking for for years. We could spend time outdoors and exercise. What more could you ask for? And we could find excitement in places most people would find boring.

We have a 23-foot Komfort 5th-wheel we pull with an '89 Chevy pickup, and are always looking for new places to go. Suddenly, the entire continent had opened up again. It was as if we hadn't yet been anywhere yet! The countries- and states-we-have-visited slate had been wiped clean.

The Rules

Here are the rules we defined to add a new bird to our list:

1) We BOTH have to SEE the bird at approximately the same time. Hearing it doesn't count
2) We have to INDEPENDENTLY agree on what it is
3) It can't be trapped or just-released
4) It doesn't have to be in the United States

Our birding objective is for both of us to see as many new bird species as possible. There are about 8500 bird species in the world.

Our Birder Guide Books

We used "Birder's Guide to Texas," by Edward A. Kutac (photo of a Golden-cheeked Warbler the cover), for some interior locations,

"A Birder's Guide to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas," by Harold R. Holt (photo of a male Golden-fronted Woodpecker on a tan cover), and

"A Birder's Guide to Southeastern Arizona," by Richard Cachor Taylor (Painted Redstart photo on a green cover).

Our Bird ID Books

I carry the National Geographic Society's "Field Guide to the Birds of North America," 2nd edition. There is a closeup painting of a bald eagle on the cover, together with a few other birds. We refer to this as the "NGS".

I also carry Peterson's "Western Birds." We call this book "Peterson's."

Sharon carries the red-covered "National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds," Western Region. We call this book the "Audubon."

When we are birding the midwest or east, we also carry Peterson's "Eastern Birds." We call this book, as you might expect, "Peterson's Eastern."

We find it is ESSENTIAL to have two or three different books with us. Sometimes one of the books will be much better for a given bird than another, or a given book may not even have a certain bird in it.

Our Equipment

I use a light pair of 8x23 Bushnell binoculars for scanning and close birds, and carry over my shoulder a Nikon 15-45x60 zoom RC Spotting Scope mounted on a lightweight Bausch & Lomb Tripod (tall). I carry a fanny pack with water bottles in each of the two holsters, and two bird books in the pack itself. I also stuff a lip sunblocker in it.

Sharon carries Bushnell 7-15x35 zoom binoculars, using a necksaver shoulder strap. She carries one or two books in a fanny pack, and a water bottle if it's hot. And a spray water bottle if it's really hot. She also borrows her dad's mosquito shirt with hood for those special times.

Storing Our Bird List On the Mac

I keep our bird list on a Macintosh Quadra 700 computer with a 13- and a 17-inch monitor hooked up at the same time, a CD ROM, 20 Megs of RAM, a 1 Gig (1000 Meg) internal hard-drive, a 425 Meg SCSI backup hard drive, and a Hewlett Packard ScanJet IIc color scanner. I use my favorite Mac (now on PC too) program - Claris' Filemaker Pro to store the list. I created the visual page format I wanted, and every bird has its own page. I include the following information for each bird:

bird's name, last name first (e.g. Finch, Purple),
city and state where we first saw him,
the location in or near the city (e.g. city park, lake, town dump),
the key features we used to make the identification,
list ID number (e.g. bird number 300),
the story of what we were doing when we saw him (this is the best part),
a scanned photograph or painting of the bird (store a live reference to this picture),
a subjective ranking of the quality of the picture (1=poorest, 7=spectacular),
about 5 seconds of his call or song, copied from a Bird Song CD,
the page of the NGS Bird ID Book.

I can do a "search" on all birds we found in a given state or country (e.g. Colorado), or type of bird's last name (e.g. Gull), or all birds since 1/1/96, or all birds seen in San Jose, for example. This will temporarily "hide" all birds not meeting the search criteria. Then using the resultant group of birds (or all the birds we've seen, if I want), I can do a sort by name (alphabetical), date seen (chronological), picture quality (to look at the spectacular pictures first) or page in the NGS Bird Book (to look through the NGS book at the same time I page through our bird list).

There is a button on the page you can click to play the bird's song. I'm a little behind with this feature.

I back up the bird list onto my SCSI hard drive.

You know, just a minimum fuss to record the bird and a little associated information.

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email: blutman@aol.com