I see predominantly picture posts here, but I wonder if text posts have a place too. I think it would be cool to share memorable birding experiences. A few come to mind for me.
This spring I saw my first Whooping Crane. I grew up in the migration path and went looking every year. I'd seen millions of sandhill cranes. Hundreds of white spots that turned out only to be two snow geese flying together or a plastic bag waving on a corn stalk. This spring I visited my home town and it happened to be during the migration. My two year old loves birds, so I thought he'd like to see so many birds at once. Unfortunately he was more interested in sitting in the truck while I looked at birds. On the way back home, a quarter mile before getting on the highway, I saw a white spec in a field, pulled over in a farmers drive way and just knew it was it. Thirty years later, I'd finally found one. Crossing it off in the index of my Sibley's was one of the most cathartic experiences of my life.
Another experience I love is the first time I saw California condors. My family visited the Grand Canyon, and I knew there was a chance to see them. When we got there they were flying so close and I couldn't even speak. My mom still tells of me pointing and saying "C-c-c-condors!".
My grandma is the one that got me into birding. She took me on a trip to an eagle count at a lake a few hours away. We saw many eagles that day. I also saw a great horned owl in broad daylight, which I've yet to see again; I remember how yellow it's eyes were. At the end of the day we stopped at the dam and my grandma put her spotting scope on some mallards and other ducks sitting around a section of open water. While I was watching, an Eagle came up and flew right over the dam, only a few dozen feet over head, then swooped down and crushed the mallard in the spotting scope so easily. We stayed and watched it eat until it was run off by other eagles that came for an easy meal.
I like to post pictures to get the community more active, but I'm also down for discussion.
Laat year, I was a teaching assistant for a study abroad course to Honduras. One of our stops was PANACAM, one of the best national parks in the country (I spent about ten days there this year, such a beautiful location). We only had half a day there. The class happened to contain only women, and the day we visited, we learned of the US Supreme Court's decision regarding abortion access. Demoralized, I led a group to a bird tower in the forest in our remaining time. They were largely uninterested in birding, but they were into the more charismatic species. In the span of an hour on that tower, we only recorded ten species, but the experience was quite exceptional. I located three king vultures far in the sky and was able to show them to the students. A dozen or so swallow-tailed kites swooped around the tower. I photographed a dark morph short-tailed hawk with a lizard in its bill across two passes (a publication I'm working on). The students located a keel-billed toucan before I did. And best (for them) of all, a white-nosed coati decided to pop up in the leaves just 20 feet from us.
I love birding, but I really love getting others into it and making cool observations with them. It was a memerable day for sure.
I love to share it as well. Most of my friends are far from birders, but they know that I am, so I get texts with pictures of birds they want identified. It's grown now so that I get texts from random numbers from friends of friends. I guess I'm the bird guy now.
Many of my friends are biologists themselves, but not all are as well-verse in birds, so I'm definitely the bird guy there. Or wildlife guy, as in the case of my family. Kinda why I started bird ID and snake ID communities here when I didn't see them (not sure how to link to them on mobile).