Oh say can you see?

One of my paternal inheritances is a love of (and sensitive eye for) wild animals. In recent years, I've become much more attuned to birds. I'm not a bird watcher, really, more of a bird noticer. I think it got started during the weeks following my younger daughter's birth. She was born May 11th, 2004, just as Vermont starts to come alive and birds appear from points south. Three days after Hazel's birth, we moved into a house along a river, with a beautiful maple tree just outside our bedroom window. During my maternity leave, two families of birds moved in and out of a single nest high in the tree - robins and cedar waxwings. I loved the waxwings. The following spring they came through, kind of an old home week. I was hoping that would become an annual ritual, but we haven't been graced with a visit since.

Ever since spotting a pair of bald eagles soaring along the Connecticut River a few miles from our house, I've become comically hyper-vigilant about eagles. The joke in our house is that bird identifications start at bald eagle and work back from there. A couple days ago I saw a large bird quite high up and there was a gleam to its head, and well...you can guess. It was actually a great blue heron - my favorite bird of all, and a sort of totem animal for me. On several other occasions, my "eagles" have turned out to be crows. Oh well, it gives my husband something to tease me about.

Misidentifying birds seems to run in our family, as my stepdaughter famously asked her dad if the bat that he'd chased out of her room was a great blue heron (she was 3). I hate it when great blue herons get in the house!