Good Morning!
It's an early Saturday, but I won't be bleeding today. Nay, I'm up this early because of the Cub Scouts.
One of our Cubmasters Emeritus is an amateur ornithologist (and he flies on planes for a living, which I find endlessly ironic), so he'll be leading the pack out in the woods on a birdwatching hike this morning.
Birds are interesting things. Sure, city dwellers curse the flying rats, and I'm assuming most of us have a birdfeeder of some sort. I've dabbled in actual birding from time to time, and I do keep a lifelist. (nowhere near as extensive as my airshow lifelist, but that's another blog entry.)
At the feeder outside my window right now, I can see a handful of house sparrows chipping away. I get Cardinals, Bluejays, Chickadees, Titmice, Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, and the ocassional Slate Junco. Such is the life at a city feeder.
But just a handful of miles away is the refuge at Rock Meadow (Belmont, MA) which is where we'll be hiking. Who knows what we'll see?
Indeed, who knows what our children will see? We tend to think of birds as a dime a dozen. Look around you today; it hardly seems like such abundand life could even be considered endangered....but you're probably looking at Rock Doves (yes, the dreaded pigeon), Starlings, Sparrows, or some other bird that has adapted and thrived in modern society.
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