Shell Shocked: The apprentice bird counter
In life, there’s always the right time to pitch in, to lend a hand, to volunteer. When I was approached to perform a sacred duty in Sanibel I couldn’t say no. It was time to stand up and be counted.
San-Cap Audubon needed volunteers to conduct its annual Christmas Bird Count. Yes, they came knocking on my door and caught me in my La-z-boy. I was reading a book on how to create a Ponzi scheme and was totally immersed in it. The chap from Audubon, whose name was Claude Beak, said that I was sorely needed to count birds.
I told him that where I came from there were no birds and that I had never counted any. The closest thing I had ever counted was a deck of cards once before a game of Hearts to make sure that all fifty-two cards were accounted for. I wasn’t very good at that either. I had to restart my count a number of times and each time got sufficiently distracted to forget what number I was up to. I would then turn the card counting over to someone more capable.
I suggested to Mr. Beak that he should find more expert volunteers who knew the difference between one bird species and another – and could count better. Mr. Beak said he had run out of volunteers and that I had been recommended by an irate neighbor. He said birding skills were desirable but not necessary. I asked him what a birding skill is.
I could see that he was already beginning to have misgivings. But he held his ground. He told me that all I had to do is go out to “Ding” Darling with a pair of binoculars. He said to get behind a tree at seven in the morning and begin to count birds flying above. I asked him how I should handle the count if the same birds flew back and forth. It would be like voting twice in an election.
He said that my binoculars would be particularly strong and that I would be able to tell if I was counting the same birds twice. He gave me a bird book to study for a week to be able to distinguish one species from another.
Mr. Beak also made it clear that if I refused to be a volunteer bird counter that I would be banned from Sanibel for life. I had no choice.
So one chilly morning at 7 a.m. I found myself behind a tree in “Ding” Darling wearing camouflage. I was given binoculars so powerful that I sensed I could point them to Mars and get a perfectly good close up view as well. I had a pen and notebook ready to record my count.
I heard trees rustling which meant that birds were awakening, stretching their wings and ready to fly off to land the early breakfast worm. Let the bird count begin. A flock of hundreds of birds appeared in the sky several miles away. I frantically began to count them as they got closer. But there were too many.
I was up to twenty-seven when they flew beyond my range of vision. So I approximated. I wrote down 200. I couldn’t be sure how accurate this number was but I knew that the number of birds I saw was in that range.
And then it happened again. Another flock of birds flew overhead from the direction the first group had flown to. I wasn’t sure if this flock was the same as the one I had just counted. They looked about the same. There were also about 200 hundred of them. I quickly opened the bird book to try to determine if the two groups were the same.
I made a command decision. I decided to treat the second group as another species. I tried counting them as they flew overhead. Again they flew too quickly for me to be able to count them all. Why hadn’t Mr. Beak given me proper instructions on how to count several hundred birds flying together somewhat accurately?
I was failing miserably. I realized I should have been an apprentice to a more experienced bird counter before the big event. But there was no turning back.
Another group flew overhead and I managed to count thirty-two. But then a rear squadron caught up with the thirty-two and my count got derailed.
I asked myself why I didn’t spend more time in the country when I was younger but self-pity is fleeting. I had counted approximately 432 birds in an hour and I was sticking to it. Mr. Beak appeared suddenly and asked me how I was doing.
“Great,” I said. “I need to take a coffee break now. Can you get someone to spell me for a bit?” I then left “Ding” Darling and returned home to bask in a much more rewarding counting experience. I counted every single corn flake as it came out of the box and every blueberry I poured into the cereal bowl.
I was perfecting my counting skills and fully expected to return to “Ding” Darling in a year or two to work on birds again.