Evolution of a birdwatcher

My darling John was not always the happy birdwatcher he is today. In fact, not long ago he was definitely the Reluctant Birdwatcher. I was in the habit, as we drove along the highway, of muttering the names of ducks we saw in the slough or hawks on power poles or birds flitting by. He retaliated by muttering the brand names of tractors or combines in the fields or even of cars we met.

Then came the infamous black-and-white ditchbird incident. April 15, 2003 (according to my memo book glove compartment records) we were en route to visit Karl and Yvonne with our older grandchildren (Cameron, Megan and Ian) along. The kids were helping me watch for birds and were on the outlook for other wildlife. I recorded sighting a herd of Pronghorn antelope west of Tessier, SK, and then another between Oyen and Youngstown in eastern Alberta.

Somewhere on the road between those two antelope sightings, John mumbled, "Black and white ditchbird."

"What did you say?" I asked.

"Did you see that black and white ditchbird?"

"What do you mean - ditchbird? You mean a magpie? A magpie is black and white."

"No, no. It's taller than a magpie. Tall and skinny. It's a ditchbird. Just keep watching. There's quite a few along here."

By this time, the kids were intrigued and anxious to catch a glimpse of Grandpa's fabulous bird. As the miles zipped by, they kept up their watch and I flipped through the field guide. What tall black and white bird could be possibly be talking about?

"There's one just ahead," he called suddenly.

"Where?" we all cried.

"Grandpa, do you mean that black and white post in the ditch?" one of the kids asked.

"That's it," John said. "A black and white ditchbird."

The kids laughed and I whacked John with the bird book. Ditchbird, indeed.

And what's worse, I wrote it down in my memo book! And so in transcribing my records to the computer program Karen set up for me, I found there isn't  slot to enter "ditchbird."

This reminds me of an old woman we met in Wetaskawin years ago when Karl was a baby. When we were moving to the town between Edmonton and Red Deer, John's mom wrote from New Brunswick asking us to look up an old school friend of hers she hadn't seen for decades. At 80+, the old gal was still an avid hockey fan - this was the era before colored TV and when there were only eight teams in the NHL. She showed us the school scribbler in which she kept detailed records about every team and for every player there were columns headed G, A, P and F. That was Goals, Assists, Penalties and the last one, F? That was Fights.

She kept her records because it added another dimension of fun to her TV game watching and that's why I keep my bird records. It's just fun. Maybe I need an "F" column on my computer to transcribe the ditzy things like John's ditchbird and Fay's eagle.