Big Year

Felix has declared a Big Year: a birder's term for a year in which to find as many birds in a given area as possible. He's doing just birds in the state, and has made a good beginning. The published state list has about 200 birds on it, and in these first weeks of the year he's found 54. Of course, these are the easy ones, but he's satisfied with his start.

Every weekend he can, he joins up with an Audubon group on an outing. Tomorrow morning he'll be catching up with a group in a wildlife reserve. Many times he doesn't know anyone there, so once, when we were looking to join them in a restaurant parking lot to follow along, I asked how we would know them. He told me to just look for a bunch of dark sedans.

I love his enthusiasm, his freedom from self-consciousness, and his willingness to hang out with lots of elderly strangers in the pursuit of a good sighting!