Singing birds along the interstate yesterday in Oklahoma got me Dickcissel (394). I’ll see some tomorrow, they are right in the field next to my hotel. I would have gotten this one in the Dry Tortugas except that just as I put my glasses on the two birds at the top of the bush, they flew off. Today was the first of what will be a string of 300 mile days, slow and easy, three hours in the morning, one hour lunch break, two more in the afternoon. That gets me 300 miles. I left Oklahoma at 7:30 am so I had time for a one hour birding break at a rest area somewhere in Arkansas. I haven’t been to Arkansas since I drove cross-country in 1977. As I pulled into the rest stop I was disappointed the trees were almost all pine. I was hoping for some southern hardwood denizens like Acadian Flycatcher and Yellow-throated Warbler. Almost an hour of searching failed to turn up anything new until a small bird flew in to the tree in front of me. As it came out, it was upside down with a brown cap – Brown-headed Nuthatch (395) -a bird I searched hard for in Florida and gave up on. But there it was!
I ate lunch, put away the binoculars, and walked while eating an apple. A gentleman walking a dog came up to me and said: “You’re a bird watcher, right?” “Yes,” indeed. “My wife recognizes you,” he started, “she met you last year and told you how she makes birds out of acrylics (or did he say styrofoam, or maybe it was matchsticks).” Huh? What’s this? Let’s see, he’s not looking for money, he doesn’t have a knife. Maybe he’s legit. So I had to ask the only question you could ask, so I popped it: “How does she know it’s me?” Without any hesitation I got: “Oh she recognizes a familiar face alright.” That clinched it. She knows me. I have now reached birder celebrity status. I can’t go anywhere without being stopped on the street. Fame can strike when you least expect it. They now know me coast to coast. I mean, if they recognize me at a truck stop in Arkansas….
Tomorrow is a birding day at a nearby wildlife refuge. I only need to drive 100 miles afterward so I can spend all morning in a hardwood bottomland forest along the Mississippi River. Targets are Acadian Flycatcher and some southern warblers. I’ll be the guy wearing the fake glasses, nose, and mustache disguise.
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