As I sat in my Astoria hotel room yesterday afternoon looking out on a flock of Western and Glaucous-winged Gulls that was perched on a deteriorating portion of a long-abandoned dock that the Columbia River had yet to fully claim, I suddenly found myself wondering what would have been had I taken up bird watching […]
philosophy
Contemplating the Grand Cycle
“If you love birds as much as I know you do, how can you possibly eat them?” That was the question I was recently asked by a friend for whom I have great respect and whose interest in the answer I trusted to be wholly sincere. Truth be told, this is not the first time […]
Finding One’s Inner Nerd
Not long ago an asynchronous Twitter-mediated conversation arose between my friends Stephen, Sharon, and myself in which we were debating the relative levels of nerdery inherent in some of the different activities in which we and many of our other friends participate. From developing a professional expertise in the various gull species of the world […]
Finding a Common Context
After looking up a passage from Ecclesiastes for a previous Born Again Bird Watcher entry, I spent a little time reading further into that book – something I had not done for quite some time. As I read along, I came to the end of the third chapter, where it is written: I said in […]