Seeing Things
A Painted Bunting came to visit yesterday. Out of pure serendipity, I happened to look out my window at just the right time. There he was, perched on the fence, leisurely eating seeds off the signalgrass that sprouted in the low ground by the south fence. He spent a fair amount of time there, too, and I watched as long as I could. Eventually, he hopped into the grapevines and disappeared.
I saw my first Painted Bunting on July 2, 1983, on the banks of the Nueces River, and I know this because it’s recorded on the notes pages of the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds. I used to keep the book in my car in case I saw a bird I wanted to identify. Now, I use an app to find my birds, and it will do it by sound, which is pretty sweet, and something I’d always wanted to learn.
And it’s just another reason to be thankful for technology. Learning bird songs in the old days would have meant days and weeks in the field. Now I simply push record, and the app accesses its database. Magic. Magical would be more precise, although given how much we denigrate scientists these days, maybe it is magic. All I know is that my life is enriched because I know the call of a Carolina Wren when I hear it, and I call that progress of a good sort.