Quality Over Quantity

Let me tell you,

In life, there are things worth doing, and things not worth doing. For instance, eating a well-balanced breakfast is usually worth the effort; watching paint dry, not so much. Unless you're paid for that kind of thing. In which case, watch on!

A challenge with Birding is that the Return On Investment (ROI) for a particular activity can be hard to determine in advance of actually doing that activity. Tools like eBird and email digests can help to predict the potential Return, and the Investment can be assessed through understanding the known amount of effort (e.g. how far is the mountain, how high is the climb, etc.) and the unknown (e.g. how much time have others spent to find the bird).

Ultimately, though, success depends on the bird cooperating with you, and only the bird can decide whether you are worthy of her time. Depending on how hungry or tired or threatened she feels, she may decide to lay low, and no amount of effort on your part will encourage her to show.

For example, the past few days here in Arizona have been very windy, with gusts as high as 40 mph. Birds tend to hate wind, as they abhor being blown about like moths, so blustery conditions can make them harder to find.

So, despite our extensive efforts, the birds have mostly said, "Not today!", and thus we're falling off our pace a bit.

That said, the "R" has still been greater than the "I", as the few birds we've added have included a local Arizona specialty, an unusual visitor from Mexico, and a threatened species!

First, our Arizona special, the Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher:

Awww.....cute!

Our unusual Mexican visitor, the Flame-colored Tanager:

Awwwwwwwww...cuter!

And, foe of loggers everywhere, the threatened Spotted Owl:

OMG HE'S THE CUTEST AND SO CUDDLY (minus the talons)

Tomorrow, we will take one more run at one of our Greatest Nemesis Birds! He is the Joker to our Batman, the Magneto to our Xavier, the Vader to our Skywalker. Who is he? Stay tuned...

Cheers,
Me