Birds and Backyards and Beaches

May

15th

admin

My first bird watching day was astounding.Oh no. Seagulls directly overhead. That means trouble . While at the beach, my brother teased the gulls with his frisbee.

I was wearing my Dad’s binoculars on a strap around my neck. It is a good thing I did not realize the value of those binoculars or it would have made me nervous. We lived in the city in New Jersey and once a year we went to the “shore” for Dad’s vacation.

Most of the birds at the beach were terns, seagulls and sandpipers. Dad let me use his binoculars even though they were his special prized possession, Leupold binoculars. He liked to watch the boats at sea. My brother enjoyed watching the girls from a distance without them knowing about it. (He was young too!I loved the birds at the bay because they were nothing like the ordinary city birds I saw at home.

My yard had normal city birds like starlings, sparrows, pigeons and once in a while bluejays and a winter cardinal. But they were all used to people so we did not use binoculars at home. Bluejays came to our backyard now and then. Grandma scolded the bluejays for chasing away the little birds.

When we were driving every Sunday afternoon in the country, Dad pointed out some hawks and buzzards in the sky but I did not yet know how to tell them apart. Dad explained. Buzzards eat dead meat, like in the cowboy movies. Hawks eat rabbits and catch them to kill them for a meal. Ah, but i still did not know how to identify them. It was Grandma who told me I needed to save my allowance to buy a book to identify birds like bird guides.

The only time we took Dad’s Leupold binoculars with us was when we went to a lake or a beach. On one trip we saw swallows flitting over the water near the cliffs. Mom saw a meadowlark but I was on the wrong side of the car and missed it. Funny. Many years later I saw my first meadowlark. By then I understood the value and importance of both birding guides and those incredible Leupold binoculars.

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