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resplendent quetzal

My younger son, Simon, is a largely self-taught birder with an encyclopedic mind, a sharp eye, a keen ear and a soft step. I, on the other hand, am a terrible birder, as he will be the first to tell you. I am impatient, dislike standing still, and am endowed with both a terrible eye and a tin ear. What’s more, I am quick to bore, easily frustrated, possess a porous memory, and can never find anything through my binoculars.

Still, because I enjoy Simon’s company, I sometimes tag along with him on his bird outings, where he’s taught me more than I ever thought I wanted to know about our feathered friends. Along the way, I’ve discovered that, while the charms of bird watching often elude me, the language of birding fills me with delight.

I speak here not of the chirps, clucks, shrieks, and squawks of the birds themselves, but of the language used to describe their attributes, habitats and tendencies.

A parliament of owls, for instance, is not only something I would pay good money to witness, but also a linguistic pleasure (and so much more civilized than a murder of crows). Is that a falcon in your binoculars? Look for its moustachial stripes. I know that the Anna’s hummingbird in my back yard is male because it just flashed its jewel-pink gorget (throat patch) at me. I can identify a varied thrush splashing in my fountain because no other bird in this area has that distinctive orange supercilium (eye stripe).

Earlier this spring, a leucistic (white) robin joined its red-breasted buddies for a worm-fest in my neighbor’s front yard. While it might have wished for a more mainstream look, at least it wasn’t carunculate, (bumpy and rippled, like the skin on a turkey’s head).

Dihedral, passerine, zygodactylous, pish….The birder’s world is awash with wondrous words bearing super-specific meanings. The names of the birds themselves are another source of enchantment. It is hard not to love the marvelous spatuletail, the blue-footed booby, or the magnificent frigatebird. But the grand prize winner for both appearance and title is the resplendent quetzal—a moniker that might come in handy if I am ever reincarnated as a drag queen.

For Simon’s birthday, I bought us tickets for a pelagic bird tour. These are ocean-going birds that you mostly don’t see from shore, like albatrosses and shearwaters. In a couple of weeks, we’ll pack up our binoculars and our Dramamine and set our alarms extra early. Although we are not usually crepuscular creatures (active during the twilight hours of dawn and dusk), we will make our way toward land’s end at first light, board a boat out into the Pacific Ocean, and aim our gazes skyward. I’ll let you know what we find.

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