I saw a pair of Eurasian Hoopoe on the way home from work the other day. They must be passing through to their winter range. I’d seen one a couple of years ago by the metro station. They’re so distinctive, there’s no mistaking them.
I’ve always had a passing interest in birds. This took an entirely new dimension when my son, Jack, was younger. By the time he was seven, he’d pretty much memorized National Geographic’s Birds of North America. I’m not kidding. He wouldn’t just tell you that “It’s a duck.” He’d tell you “It’s a Common Merganser.” And if you asked him the difference between a Common Merganser and a Hooded Merganser, he wouldn’t tell you that the Hooded Merganser had a crest (from which it got its name), he’d tell you that the Common Merganser is “bigger by about two inches.”
I remember waiting at an ATM in Salinas when he was seven. He was playing nearby and came running up to me to tell me he had just seen a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. I told him to describe the bird to me and if he was right, we’d go for ice cream. “It’s small, army-green colored, with red on the top of its head.” We went into a bookstore in the nearby mall, pulled out a bird book, and looked it up.
He got his ice cream.
Those were good times, and Monterey was a good place for it. We spent a lot of time around Monterey Bay doing plenty of birdwatching, especially at a place called Elkhorn Slough, a reclaimed wetland area that had some incredible bird habitat. We walked those paths quite a bit, and Jack was certainly a master birdwatcher. In addition to some of the obvious birds (I remember the Osprey especially), he had a sharp eye for some of the more difficult to see. On one occasion he spotted a Belted Kingfisher fishing from a branch near a pool 100 meters away. He was the one to tell me it was a Belted Kingfisher. It was just a Kingfisher to me.
I’m sure I still have the small books from which I’d quiz him – one for songbirds, one for waterfowl, one for birds of prey. Open to any page and he could tell you the bird just be looking at the picture. I can’t recall him ever getting any wrong.
I know his interest is still there. He’ll occasionally tell me about some birds he’d seen in the area. He even sent me a picture of a family of Screech Owls that were living outside his window a while back. And it was Jack that tipped me off that 삐삐 was a Vinous-throated Parrotbill.
So now I still get a bit of a thrill when I see an interesting bird. Those Hoopoe reminded me of that. And being on a major migratory path that has so much wetland along its western coast, Korea has plenty of interesting birds to look for. I see a few of them when I’m out riding (I saw another Hoopoe today). And Micha’s excitement at seeing interesting birds (and the way she loves 삐삐) is another joy to experience. I’ve said it before. You just can’t help but feel uplifted by seeing something so amazing, interesting, and beautiful.
