Seeing more

Last month Dan bought me a new set of binoculars, handpicked to be small, light, and easy to take on any hike. I simply love them and have used them daily at the breakfast table (to view the birds, not the breakfast), and have marveled at the beauty of the most ordinary bird.

Yesterday afternoon we made a short excursion to White Water Draw to test out one of Dan's camera lenses and I took the binocs. WWD is an Important Birding Area, well known for the overwintering sand hill cranes that spend the afternoon there after feeding in the agricultural fields in the morning. There are several thousand cranes in one spot, most of them napping, some grooming (there is an amazing amount of bird down flying around there), and some squabble.

The cranes are a marvelous sight by themselves, with their red hats and their beautiful plumage varying from gray to gold. Some birds were even completely gold. In addition there were a number of other water birds that we ordinarily do not see around here and I was able to add many new varieties to my Life List. A lot of these birds only spend the winter here. The binoculars certainly did do their job.

The bird of the day was one that I would never have seen without the binoculars. I just detected movement along the reedy shore and saw a long neck being stretched up and when it was still the bird was completely hidden in the grass. It moved very slowly but once it stepped out into some shallow water, its legs were green! Apple green. It would continue its slow stalk, stretching its neck and being a reed.

At home I found out that this was the American Bittern, a bird I had not heard about and one that is even endangered. Unfortunately we did not hear its unique call, but had it not been for the binoculars, I would have certainly missed him.