Must. Go. Birding.

First, I apologize for the relative paucity of blog posts in the last couple weeks. Things have taken some adjusting here in Drinking Bird land. I’ve gone back to work following some paternity leave off in the wake of Noah’s birth and the subsequent return in addition to the full time job of taking care of an infant has left me completely exhausted. So much so, that some things I enjoy, like birding, and blogging, and especially blogging about birding, have fallen through the cracks. In fact, the prospect of getting up early enough to beat the June heat seems absolutely insane in the last couple weeks, so I haven’t been birding much, which leaves me with precious little to write about.

But all that’s changed, at least for yesterday, because I decided I simply had to get out and look at some birds. It was crucial for my mental state, and because I’m so consciously aware of my dear wife’s mental state as well, I decided to take baby Noah with me. After all, the more I get that kid out in the woods, the more he’ll like it, and the more I’ll be able to convince my wife we need to be out in the woods. It’s the opposite of a downward spiral, it’s an… up…ward spiral… or something.

Anyway, baby bjorn in tow, we went to Duke Forest.

The interesting thing about birding with a baby, especially in a place as well traveled as Duke Forest, is the attention. Now some people may like it, and I admit that the artificial importance attributed to an individual with a baby can be intoxicating in some social situations. Even a cold-hearted crank like myself isn’t completely immune. But when I’m out birding, I’m interested in birding, and not particularly interested in discussing the relative cuteness of my sleeping child while your dog (unleashed, by the way) scares away my Prairie Warblers. So move along now folks, I think I just heard a Chat.

But it was nice to be out and about, in any case. While I didn’t see just a staggering number of birds or species, you can probably guess the 40 or so species one might turn up on a summer day in North Carolina, I did find a Yellow-throated Vireo, a bird I see about once for every six times I hear it and nearly every species of nesting warbler. So not a bad morning for mid-summer.

Oh, and Noah slept pretty much the whole time, which again, I’ll take as a win.