(Before Becoming Completely Unreasonable)

OK. I’ll admit it.

I’m seeing movement where there isn’t any.

Leaves twitch.
Branches sway.
A shadow crosses the lawn.

And I freeze.

Because in my mind it might be a bird.

Now this is new behavior for me.
I wasn’t always like this.

I was… normal.

Back then my entire relationship with birds could be summed up in one simple hope:

Please don’t drop one on my car.

That was it.

Now?

Now I scan tree lines like a border patrol agent for feathers.

Even when I don’t have my camera with me, my brain still runs the same software.

Movement.
Color.
Silhouette.

“Possible warbler.”
“Maybe a finch.”
“Could be a leaf.”

I have been known to stare at a well-disguised knot in a tree for fifteen minutes waiting for it to blink.

But on this day… it wasn’t a knot.

Here’s the scene.

I’m at my son’s house in Montclair, New Jersey.
The whole family is out on the back deck eating, laughing, having a great time.

I’m there too.

Technically.

But then I see it.

A flash.

Yellow.

Not a big flash.
More like a suggestion of yellow.
The kind that makes a birder’s brain fire like a slot machine.

Ding ding ding.

I look again.

Shape looks warbler-ish… but at that distance I can’t be sure.

Someone was talking to me.

I stopped listening.

Mid-sentence.

Gone.

My brain had left the deck.

I grabbed my camera and began my approach.

Slow.

Quiet.

Focused.

Like a jaguar stalking a caiman along a riverbank.

I even crouched.

Now there comes a moment in wildlife photography where you have to decide:

Do I move closer for more detail…

…or do I take the shot now before the bird launches into another zip code?

Because birds are famous for exiting the frame exactly when your finger touches the shutter button.

But this one stayed.

Maybe she thought I wasn’t a threat.

Or maybe my approach was so painfully obvious that she decided to give the old guy a sympathy shot.

Either way…

I got it.

My first female Yellow-rumped Warbler.

Beautiful little bird.

Mission accomplished.

I lowered the camera and turned back toward the deck.

My grandchildren were all staring at me.

You could see the curiosity.

Finally one of them asked the question I get a lot these days.

“Papa…”

“What was it?”

And with the quiet pride of a man who had just crawled across a suburban lawn like a jungle predator for a creature roughly the size of a ping-pong ball…

I answered:

“A warbler.”

They nodded.

Very politely.

Which is the same look people give you when you say something they don’t understand…

…but they suspect you’re very excited about it.

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