They got it. Got it square and dead to rights. You could see it by the smiles etched on their faces. You could see it reflected in the gloss of their eyes.
They could tell a Sharp-shinned Hawk from a Cooper’s Hawk. They had toed the line of one of the defining thresholds of birding and now....
They’d crossed over.
They got it! What a great feeling it is.
When our three-day birding workshop entitled “Cape May With Everything On It” had started, 23 participants had stared at the raptorial forms shooting past with mystified wonder. Wonder compounded and confounded by frustration.
“Well, yes, the bird is flapping quickly, but the flap is stiff not quick and snappy. I think Cooper’s on that one.”
“Yes, you can see the head on that one all right. But the bird is close. Look at the jutting wrists. Imagine how the bird would look if it were twice as high. Wouldn’t the head just disappear in the gully? Merge with the wings and become invisible to the eye? I think that one is a Sharpie."
Sharp-shinned Hawk in flight.
They’d gotten their noses bloody and after each and every mistake licked their wounds in silence, vowing, as all birders do, to do better next time.
And they did do better because bird by bird, failure by compounded experience, they began to put it all together. Began to see the subtle (and even not so subtle) things that distinguished Sharp-shinned from Cooper’s.
It made me smile. It should make leaders smile. That’s why people who lead workshops and tours continue to do it.
And no small measure of my satisfaction is grounded in the knowledge that just as workshop attendees improve their skills, I have improved mine over 30 years. Thirty years ago, I would have told them:
“Look at the chest? Is it heavily streaked or faintly streaked?”
“Look at the tail? Is it rounded or squared?”
Now we look at the whole, not the parts. Look at…
“OK. Does it look like a flying wooden mallet or a flying Roman cross?”
“Mallet.”
Then it’s a Sharpie.
“Is it flapping a great deal (even when it’s soaring) or is it just sailing along on an even keel; nary a bounce or sputter?”
Cooper's Hawk in flight.
“Sailing along!”
Then it’s Cooper’s.
And on the afternoon of the second day, you could see that they got it. Pinned names to high flying birds of prey with confidence and ease. The trick is knowing the tricks.
There is nothing more satisfying than “got it.”
It more than compensates for the frustration that comes of getting it.
It’s why people come on birding workshops and why leaders lead them.
Got it?