Talk about your intersecting vectors! I went back down to Brig today with Shari to try for the Gyrfalcon again. We hadn't been there 2 minutes when we were about to make the turn onto the Wildlife Drive. We saw a few Turkey Vultures wavering over the marsh, then, among them, a big, fast flying raptor. Shari thought it was an eagle but I could tell by size, shape, color, and speed that it was the Gyrfalcon. So she got her life bird with out any angst, sturm, or drang.
I put an alert out but no one saw, definitively, the bird for a few hours, until it appeared farther up the road, where it had been seen yesterday. So yesterday I had a brief look at it on the ground and today I saw it flying (for comparison, we also had a Peregrine Falcon later--much different-looking bird), but I still don't have the field guide illustration look at it.
This was Shari's 1500th life bird, putting her, again, 102 ahead of me. Unlike Shari, I've never been Iceland, I didn't want to stay in South Africa for a month (with a side trip to Lesotho) and, of course, I am a committed landlubber which rules out pelagics. Hence her big lead, which I'll never overtake.
But, really, birding isn't a competition.
Unless I'm winning.
No comments:
Post a Comment