Blue Dog Nights

Alright, so if you’ve landed here a time or two, it will come as no surprise that I am enthralled with the birds of south Louisiana. I am particularly fond of the big birds (no, not the Sesame Street variety although Big Bird was definitely a childhood hero). But it’s not that I don’t like smaller birds. It’s just that my eyes aren’t what they used to be so I often don’t notice them as easily and I don’t have one of those groovy cool super-duper zoom lenses to make them look like anything other than colored dots when I do see them. While I’m sure that Santa will be leaving a few of those high-powered lenses under some Christmas trees this year, there won’t be one under mine. But that’s ok, cause I still need to figure out how to use the lenses I do have anyway.

I was thinking though that it’s kind of funny that I love taking photographs of all these amazing birds throughout our wetlands, but I can’t really identify most of them by name. It’s not that some very patient folks haven’t tried to teach me, but I think my memory is beginning to follow my eyes. But maybe if I’m a good girl, what Santa might very well leave me under the tree this year is a birding field guide to help me out.

A good friend once told me that they only had regular birds where he grew up in Brooklyn. And I kept thinking during my trek around the bayous yesterday, what would Sandy call these birds? Highly irregular birds?