Chance Encounters

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               I think this was a tired bird, resting during his spring migration (the coloring indicates that the bird is male), either stopping for a rest on his way further north, or perhaps deciding that this location is where he will reside for the summer if the conditions seem right. His journey began in the northern regions of South America, crossing Mexico or perhaps the Gulf of Mexico, and arriving in the northern half of the North American continent in April. In September or October, he’ll head back to South America, where he will stay until he does it all over again the next year.

             I’d never seen a Scarlet Tanager before I took this picture. I was pretty new to the hobby when I was walking on this trail in North Aurora, along the Fox River. A woman coming the other way saw my binoculars around my neck and told me that a Scarlet Tanager was sitting on a branch to my right just around the bend ahead. When I got to the place she pointed me to, I saw that the bird was so still that even I couldn’t screw this photo up.

             I don’t have much of a camera for nature photography. I have a contraption that attaches to my binoculars and also onto my iPhone, allowing me to use my phone camera to take photos zoomed in a lot closer than my phone can do on its own. It’s good enough for my purposes. My purposes are to walk for an hour a day in various settings, looking for birds, taking pictures when I get a chance, and compiling a list of what I see during the calendar year. When I’m asked about when I got interested in this pastime, I usually say that the COVID pandemic brought it o —too much time indoors, an opportunity to get outside to escape the lockdown. But that’s not actually true. I didn’t start looking for birds until things were more or less back to normal, which makes me think that my motivation had something to do with a recalibration of my life and priorities after having gotten through the strain of it all. Slow down. Take care of yourself.

            In 2022, I catalogued a total of 89 different bird species during my walks. The best find was a Great Horned Owl in a tree along the banks of the Fox River in North Aurora. In 2023, so far I have 107 species on my list for the year, the rarest a Blue Grosbeak found at Nelson Lake in Batavia. It was a hot day, and I walked for an hour on the trail across the wide open prairie, hoping to find a Bobolink, a species that has still eluded me. I was frustrated and about to quit, but then I heard the Merlin app on my phone (which listens to birdsongs and identifies for me what it hears) pick up something I’d never heard before, the song of a Blue Grosbeak. I doubled back on the path and took a picture from a good distance away, managing to capture my most impressive bird in a very unimpressive photo before it took off in flight. I posted the picture on the Facebook group of birdwatchers in the region, and received comments from several who have pursued this interest for years, saying that they have never managed to find one of these.