Flush it Friday: THE LIFE LIST GROWS
While my fascination with birds is far from new (how did you know?!), it took a fellow old’s millennial’s newfound obsession to get me actively birding out in the field. Said millennial—we’ll call him Dee—invited me to a morning bird walk with the Brookline Bird Club, and I’ve been hooked ever since; where else can I hear an elderly man describe an animal’s call as “I’ll seize ya when I sees ya / and I’ll squeeze ya ’til I squirt” and see a baby woodpecker, both before 7am? The groups I’ve been out birding with have been exceptionally friendly nerds, always willing to share some nature knowledge and pass on their joy to complete strangers, or lend me a pair of Swarovski binoculars worth more than my entire life.
My latest bird-quest brought me to a group outing at MA’s Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, where I hoped to add a bunch of species to my life list, which I track through Cornell’s Merlin app. (For anyone who ever enjoyed Pokémon Snap, this app is basically a Pokédex that helps identify bird calls and keep track of “lifers,” or personal first-time sightings.) As we arrived in the marshlands, we were met by massive flocks of migrating Tree Swallows, Purple Martins tending their nests, and hundreds of shorebirds wading in the shallows—from Snowy Egrets to Semipalmated Sandpipers and Greater/Lesser Yellowlegs. Did I mention there were Double-Crested Cormorants? There were cormorants.
At the end of a long boardwalk leading into dunes by the beach, my group was extremely excited to hear that the Eastern Towhee, which we heard making its name-sake call, would be a lifer for me. After hours walking under withering sunlight, the entire group was willing to wait for the elusive critter to show itself, just for my sake; naturally, this made me pretty uncomfortable and I slowly started inching back to the parking lot. That’s when this MFer, a jumbo-sized member of the sparrow family, flew right out onto an open perch:
he’ll ye
Simply glorious. Much like the flushing that is about to occur!
Stick stuck it to Monday with TMP. Spear toileted his Twednesday.
Falxifer was happy for more from Moore in this Sev Lezu review:
Local Disso Daddy Brock Samson wants to get atonal with YOU:
Tha Boiz got weird on this ‘sode of Toilet Radio, which for reasons entirely unclear to me, delves into the mysteries of The Adventures of Ford Fairlane:
Lo-cal. BIG TASTE. Meadow Wyand and Reliquary Tower get diminutive and delicious with these Mini Reviews:
Y’all been birding? Y’all gonna start birding? Y’all gonna G/B/U? The answer to all of these questions should be a resounding “Yes, Roldy!” You know what to do, you great bunch of cuckoos.
