confession

I have a confession to make.
I'm no longer a bad birder.
One thing led to another...
and I got in over my head and started hanging about
charming and esoteric people who could say,
O, western marsh harrier, that's a first for southeast Cambodia
when a large brown hawk-thing dashed by...
and I let my deep and pressing need for knowledge to get involved...
and I've become a half decent birder.

Hallum has informed me that I must resign my post as the head of the Bad Birder of Cambodia (and Friends). I said that surely as the founder of the whole glamorous endeavor, I couldn't be made redundant. He said that I was now actually a Birdwatcher, and would actually get up early in the morning for the cause. I admitted that this was true. He said I can remain a sort of spiritual director of the thing, but he is taking up the reins. I said that he needed to start using his binoculars if he wanted to watch birds. He said that this sort of talk is the reason I've been summarily promoted out of my own society...

I still don't take photographs of birds. My apologies to those dear (and sometimes annoying, yes, Eli, Ornithological Brother-Friend, I mean you) friends who keep asking why I don't. I really think that one either watches birds or photographs birds, and I would rather watch them. Someday, if I ever have a good camera again, I will reconsider this state of affairs.

I am, however, going to learn to draw birds. I've become disgraced by my own field notes, which occasionally have a badly scrawled cartoon-like head of a bird that doesn't help me in the slightest when I identify it later. And I need things to do to keep me sane this year, and I can't just up and go the far reaches of Scotland in pursuit of birds anytime I leave the office. So. Birds. On paper. Drawn with pencils. And maybe some Markers.

I bought a book about it. The main problem with the very gorgeous book that I bought is that the guy thinks we should all be drawing birds in the field. As in on the wing, on the wire, in the pond. This takes me back to the far reaches issue. And it makes me think that I should maybe then just get on with the photography... This whole birding thing just keeps getting more complicated. I have good binoculars now, and now I feel my life would be infinitely better if I had a Harness to wear them on. I have finally started using a birding notebook, and now I'm supposed to be dragging art supplies out to the lagoons? Honestly. I'll be living in a caravan soon, surrounded by archaic tomes on birds of the world.

All of this to say that the BBC (and friends) might need rechristening. Suggestions welcome.