Birding the theater of the ABSURD

Well, ok. Perhaps this is a bit of a far-flung connection, but I personally believe it rings true.

It was something I thought of just yesterday as I strolled through the woods- out on my own- enjoying nature and whatever birds I happened to stumble across.

So yeah, you've probably guessed that I'm going to talk about birds. You're right about that. But i've noticed some funny things about them recently. Perhaps these are the kinds of things that you notice only after you've been birding for several years and you THINK you know every bird there is to know.

Yesterday, for example, I was out in the woods when a certain bird caught my attention. Its thick noisy wingbeats filled the air as it flapped through the trees and landed on a thick branch- a huge, poofy gray behemoth of a bird- all by itself- in the middle of the woods. What could it possibly have been? It was something even I did not recognize, so i quickly put my binocs on it.

It was a pigeon. A feral rock pigeon. Like, what the hell? What was a pigeon doing in the middle of a forest- away from civilization? Was it lost? Or had it just decided to come here like me to get away from the city?

So you see, this pigeon was just one example of a bird not doing what it's supposed to do- and birds, surprisingly do that quite often. They don't follow the rules. They don't follow logic-and if they did, it's probably no better than the logic birders follow. The whole world of birding is simply illogical. Like, who else but birdwatchers will miss their cousin's wedding, drop what they're doing, and trudge through a mosquito-filled swamp just to see some paltry little feathered creature? Who else would you find snooping around a sewage treatment plant at 7 in the morning looking for a rare species of duck? I mean, doesn't it seem kind of silly what we birders do? I believe so, and that's part of why i do it. I believe in absurdity.

Oh yeah, and i forgot to mention Murphy's Law. That's perhaps the ONLY law that exists for birdwatching.