An Accidental Birder's Journal

Birds and more while walking in Gallinas River Park
at Las Vegas, San Miguel Co, New Mexico

I am not a real birder, I am just a just a guy who likes to take a walk, preferable near some water and who notices and appreciates his natural environment, all of it: animal, vegetable and mineral. In the past I concentrated on the vegetable and mineral; photographing, identifying and cherishing. The animal part of the natural world was a little too quick in most cases for anything but cherishing a fleeting glance. The dead of course are an exception, though the living are quick to make them disappear too. Birds were the worst. By the time I set the f-stop, time and focused the camera or got out the guide book and found the right page the subject was gone. Cherish the memory.

I have a serious defect to being a real birder. I am perfectly happy here at home in Las Vegas, the thought of boarding an airplane or even getting into a car just to look for birds bewilders me. Once you have learned that there are different lands, why travel to distant places before learning all you can of your own. I just like to walk my own home ground now to see what I can see.

I have a couple more handicaps. I cannot hear the high pitched song of those little birds, an important clue to their identification and I'm myopic making everything in the distance a little fuzzy. Woops! Thare goes a little blue fuzzy thing, I wonder what it was. That's me, a half deaf, half blind stick-in-the-mud.

I am not a real birder, but I found that a new digital camera I bought to photograph all the plants of Las Vegas gave me a fighting chance to record and identify all that I see: the birds, animals as well as the plants, those beloved stationary beings. A 60X zoom lens and multiple exposures with one press of the button gives me plenty of material to figure out from my books and the internet what I saw. Therefore I have accidentally become a birder!

So, as I would say to Willy when he was my constant companion
"Let's take a walk on the wild side." of the Gallinas River.

That's all for now,

this 31th of August, 2015