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How do you know when you’re hooked?
- You check the weather app every day – to see if tomorrow will be a good day for birding. What makes a good day? Temperature. Between 45 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit (7.22-20 degrees Celsius) seems optimal. Most birds (and people) don’t like it too hot. No rain, of course — although there’s sometimes a sudden burst of activity after heavy rainfall. Sunny or overcast is okay.
- When you spend way too much time playing the ebird.org identification game. (Scroll to the bottom of their Explore page.)
- When you pull a suitcase from the closet, and pack it with things useful for daily outings. It then becomes a permanent fixture in the car. My case contains:
- A sweatshirt
- Fingerless gloves
- Wool cap
- Lightweight coat
- Band aides (haven’t had to use those yet)
- Aspirin (nor those)
- Biodegradable eating utensils (for lunches at picnic tables)
- Napkins
- A coffee mug
- A change of socks (beaches, swamps, and puddles get feet wet)
- 13-gallon plastic bags
- Gallon or quart sandwich bags
- Insect repellent
- Sunscreen
- Disposable rain ponchos
- An extra pen
- An extra notebook
- A lightweight backpack (useful when faced with a longer-than-expected trail)
- When you find yourself snapping photos of birds – after you swore off photography.
- When you get excited because you’ve seen a bluebird or willet – because they’re new to you.
- When, instead of feeling exhausted when you get home, you race to the computer to enter your findings on ebird and process your pictures.
- When you find yourself with a State Parks Annual Membership, because scrambling for exact change in the parking lot slows you down.
- When you have a fanny pack loaded and ready to go. Mine contains:
- A few emergency dollars
- Credit card
- Identification
- State Parks pass
- Lens cloth for my bins (birding lingo for binoculars)
- A 13-gallon trash bag (to protect my bins and fanny pack in the event of rain)
- A quart sandwich bag (for seashells I discover at the beach)
- A little 30x optical-zoom camera
- Notebook for sightings
- Two pens
- Extra camera batteries
- When you proudly wear a T-shirt that says, “Bird Nerd.”
- When your first blog-post is about birding.