Old friends, new birders

I and the Bird #102 at The Birder’s Lounge

It’s sometimes funny the way that birding brings people together in ways that are not always immediately obvious. I found myself in such a situation a couple months ago when I re-connected with an old classmate from my college days. Kim and I had both been biology majors at Truman State University, a little liberal arts school in the far northern wasteland of Kirksville, Missouri. Circumstance placed us on the same wing of the dormitory and convenience made us partners for several group projects.

I soon bolted from the biology department after a particularly bad showing in a couple classes and a frustrating creationist professor (I know, right?), something I regret to this day, but she made good and ended up with a degree, turning back up on my radar as a civic employee in the town of Cape Coral, Florida. In the intervening time she had become an avid birder, as any time in southwest Florida will do to you if you have any blood in your veins at all, and unbeknownst to me, a reader of this here blog without realizing that we had once shared a classroom those many years ago. Small world, huh?

Kim was as shocked to know I was a birder (I held those cards pretty close to my chest back then, and even so was not at all active) but was planning on making a trip to North Carolina to visit some friends, was passing through Raleigh, and wanted to know if I would be available for a morning out, and maybe I knew a good spot to find some Yellow-breasted Chats.

Would I and do I ever! Baby or no, catching up with an old friend with the possibility of finding said friend a lifer, especially one as charismatic as a Chat? Yes, please.

The morning dawned overcast and ultimately, bad for photography so no pictures, sorry. But I took her out to my old stomping grounds at Mason Farm. Being mid-June and all the birds were largely quiet. But the summer heat does little to dissuade the Chat, and I’m happy to say we found a cooperative bird that perched atop a shrubby Sweet Gum long enough to savor it just a bit. Getting the target is definitely a good feeling, but I couldn’t help but wish that the clouds had parted just for a second so that the brilliant yellow was more, well, brilliant. But, beggers and choosers and all.

Other highlights included a couple singing Blue Grosbeaks and a family of Acadian Flycatchers, the fledglings of which looked all the world like Leasts. I knew, though, that they couldn’t be anything but another indication of why Empids are plain hard.

It was a short morning, Kim had to make her way back to the airport, but a lifer morning nonetheless, and that’s great. And that birding can bring two old friends back together years after they met as non-birders, is even better.