My New Hobby: Birding

Now hold on- Birding? how in the world does someone who loves outdoor adventures get a kick out of bird watching? All you do is look at birds through binoculars right?! It's usually just a bunch of old men and super weird people like the photo above? Definitely not something for the young college age kids.

I have been known to hop from hobby to hobby at times, the only one that seems to have stuck as a major part of my life is climbing so far. But my new thing is Birding: The act of Bird Watching. I know its seems silly and something to make fun of someone for, and truthfully, that's what I did at first. When I first thought of birding I thought of old retired men sitting on their porches with binoculars, or old people that use it as an excuse to go spend the day in the woods smoking weed without their wives yelling at them for it. But I've learned that these scenarios are not always true. I recently learned that two of my climber friends are "birders" and man did I make fun of them for it. After enough pestering, and after the more serious birder of the two found out that my last name was "BIRDSall", they invited to me to tag along and see what it was all about. I thought "Why not?" and giggled at the thought of how crazy I would look to my participants during my summers at an outdoor education program called La Vida: The crazy sherpa that knows everything about the woods including all the birds!

Okay, maybe not this crazy of a bird lady.
 The first trip out birding, I was smiling the whole time at how silly I felt; creeping out of car windows to catch a look at some birds, hiking in the snow so I could see an eastern screech owl sleeping under a bridge, searching around for an hour or two to catch a glimpse of some other owls that were supposedly nesting around somewhere. The five or six hour trip that at the beginning of the day seemed like it would feel like forever, seemed to fly by. I was having too much fun learning about and observing all these different animals that I had never really payed very much attention to before.
 It probably helps starting off with some experienced people that are very knowledgeable about the local spots and species. At times, I feel bad for my birder friend that lets me tag along, because I just spend the whole time on our trips picking his brain, and more often than not he seems to be a walking textbook about everything that is cool - including birds.

If you think you want to give it a try and see what it is all bout, the book to check out is The Sibley Guide to Birds. Its the one that was recommended to me, and it has helpful illustrations and descriptions of the birds. After having to renew my copy from the library, I decided I needed to buy my own copy, committing myself to become a birder, at least an amateur birder. You can get an App for this guide that will play all the common calls for the birds as well as showing you all the information about them, which is really helpful and cool, but for those of us who don't have an I-phone that doesn't exactly work for us. I got my book off of Amazon.com

Flicker Woodpecker

This little guy is one I learned about this past week at Kill Dear Plains near Marion Ohio. We spent the morning there checking out what was there and looking for owls in two different spots. Although we weren't to lucky with the owls (we saw just one Bard owl that was cool to me, never seeing one before, but wasn't as exciting to the other more experienced birders), we saw plenty of these beautiful flicker woodpeckers, some horned larks, american tree sparrows, harrier hawks, rough-legged hawks and some bald eagles. There were many others there but those were just the highlights for me, if you get a chance and want to go check some birds out, Kill Dear planes was a pretty place that isn't that far of a drive from Columbus.

 These are all photos I just pulled off of google, next time I go, ill see if we can get some photos of some of the stuff we see to show ya guys.

Now when I go on a hike with Molly, or am walking to class, or even driving around the city, I tend to pay more attention the birds around me, and I must say I am amazed by how much wildlife activity I never noticed before I started paying attention to birds. So I encourage you to not think of Birding or Birders as I did a couple weeks ago, like the people in the photo above, but really look at the birds around you and if you pay close attention you'll see just how interesting these under-rated little creatures really are!