My First Bird

Years ago, a beer company used the slogan "You always remember your first girl" to advertise their beer.

Well, do you remember your first bird?

Now, I don't mean when you were a baby and some adult said to you, "See the birdie?"

Or, if you were in a park, and a parent said, "Look, there's a robin!"


I'm talking about the first bird that you identified on your own by using a field guide (for us older birders) or an app (for you newer birders).

For me, my first bird is the White-breasted Nuthatch.

It was Friday July 13, 1979 and I was working as the Nature Specialist at the Holiday Hill Day Camp in Prospect, Connecticut.  I had just graduated from the University of Bridgeport, CT and had recently taken a bird identification course so I was a newbie birder.  And one day, near the tennis courts, I noticed this smallish, cigarish-shaped, black-gray-white bird walking head first DOWN a tree!

Here's the description of the bird that I wrote in my field notebook that day:  "looked like a small blue jay; walked down white ash tree." Looking back now, the only thing a white-breasted nuthatch and a blue jay have in common are some of their colors - black and white - but where the blue jay has vivid blue, the nuthatch is a duller blue-gray.

Not knowing where to begin, I took my Peterson Guide to North American Birds: Eastern United State, and skipping the sections on shore birds, looked at every page until I found a match!  At that time, I had no idea to look under the Passerine (perching birds) section.

The white-breasted nuthatch also has a distinctive call - a nasally 'hank, hank', as some have described it.  To hear its call (and to find out more about birds), go to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology  at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1478

Red-breasted nuthatch

As an aside, a close relative to the white-breasted is the red-breasted nuthatch.  As the name implies, the red-breasted has a buff/brownish/rust colored breast and is much smaller.  Found mainly north of Connecticut, there has been irruptions of them in the winter when northern food supplies are low.

So, what is your first bird?

"Come here, Norman. Hurry up. The loons! The loons! They're welcoming us back."

You may recognize that quote from  the 1981 film "On Golden Pond" starring Katherine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Jane Fonda.

So it was my self-appointed quest to not only hear loons but also to photograph them on my recent trip to the Bangor area of Maine.

I heard the loons on the second night on the pond by the cabin we were staying in and I immediately thought of the loons from the movie.  It was a big pond and some would say it was a lake, but lakes have an inflow as well as an outlet and this body of water is fed from an underground spring and not from a river - hence it is a pond and not a lake.

Common Merganser

The next day, the loons came in closer to the cabin and I had my camera ready for them!  I'm not sure if there is another more stately looking bird - it's high contrasting black and white coloration, it's sleek low profile, and it's mournful cry - all just seem to say "Here I am; Look at me!"

Bald Eagle

Blue-Headed Vireo

 I was also lucky to observe the loons as they swam underwater looking for fish.

In addition to the common loons, I also observed: a matured bald eagle, a female common merganser with 10 chicks, a few robins, and blue-headed vireo (a life bird for me!).

  

NOTE:  This is another evolutionary step in my blog about birds.  My other bird blogs are:

My Hometown Big Year

Birding 2013 (only did half the year)