Birding Etiquette

 

You can count a bird if you can see it.  My friend Jon tells me the bird doesn’t even have to be alive to count it.  Even if the bird is dead on the ground that means it was there.  There is one bird that the only Texas record for it is from a dead bird.  It was in Texas for a little while anyway.

 

I take that to mean that if I’m driving down the road and find a Ruddy Duck stuck in the radiator at the end of the day, I can count it.  Not only can I count it, but if it’s still there the next morning, I can count it again.  A Scarlet Tanager died in a tree at the Birding Center.  Jon got a Scarlet Tanager every day for two weeks!

 

So I wonder…..  how much of the bird do you actually have to see to make the call?  If there is an unseen bird in a bush and a Cardinal sticks his head out, you don’t have to see the whole bird to make the call.  It was a Cardinal.  So you don’t have to see the entire bird, and the bird doesn’t even need to be alive, you just have to see enough of it to be able to make the call.

 

Three days ago I was walking on the boardwalk at Charlie’s Pasture.  I saw a feather.  I know what bird that feather came from.  I don’t need any more information about that bird to make the call, so I’m making it.  Roseate Spoonbill.  Not only that, I’ve gotten the Roseate Spoonbill three days in a row now…