Life is never better for me than after a trip with LOTS of birds and dear friends!
I have SO much to say and so little time to say it….
But here’s a post I drafted on the plane ride home Monday followed by a busy week of soccer, baseball games, viola lessons, and finals for my class….. I’m FINALLY getting a chance to post it!
“The last 5 days went by in a flash.. and here I sit on the plane ride home….smiling, exhausted, fulfilled and exhilarated.
about to get BIGGER!
After several teary goodbyes to my youngest this morning….I showed up to class in my hiking boots, gave my students their last exam for the semester, plugged in their grades and went straight to the airport. I’m heading to ‘The Biggest Week in American Birding’ at Magee Marsh in Ohio and I’m SUPER excited! 😃
Looking forward to reconnecting with old friends, making some new ones, and adding some new species to the MBY list!
Will report back soon! 
I spent yesterday’s environmental science lecture discussing the ins and outs of forest fragmentation and the impact of the edge effect on forest-interior dwelling species. Super fun for me as I had a chance talk about wood thrushes, cowbirds and such. I usually keep my cell phone on the podium so I can watch the time… Unbeknownst to my students, I saw several texts come in about a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron that had just been discovered at Centennial lake. 🙂 It’s a bird not frequently seen in my home county and one I still needed for the year. I wanted to end class early and hop in my car…. but I resisted! 🙂
I’ve been wanting to blog since my fantastic trip birding Poplar Island on the Chesapeake Bay last week but have been running full steam ever since. It was a really fun day out in the field, but I’ll have to save my report for another day.
The title listed above is today in a nutshell! Watersheds, crockpots and owls, oh my! Sounds like a non sequitur doesn’t it?.. But isn’t a mom’s life simply a series of non sequiturs? Actually, I think I’m a professional at non sequiturs…LOL. Now I even know how to spell it correctly. 🙂 Continue reading
Work. sleep. family. fitness. friends. (And let’s add BIRDING too– or whatever your *passion* might be!)
“Pick three”, I’ve been told.
Hmmm… As a mom, ‘family’ ~always~ is at the top of the list and for me ‘friends’ need to be in there too.. And if you know me well enough.. then you know that Nature Nancy NEEDS to have ‘birding’ in there too.. And you may know that I’m loving my new job — so I need to include that as well… So, that means there’s nothing left for ‘sleep’ & ‘fitness’. Hmmm. <Insert head scratch here>
Last week, sleep had to take a back seat.. as friends (and work) needed some more attention. I did try to beat the system and sneak in some extra sleep, however. 😉 I have become an expert at setting a three-minute timer on my phone during the day and taking a nap for those three minutes. I’m not sure that that qualifies as real sleep, but I’ll take what I can get. (And yes, I CAN fall asleep for a good portion of those three minutes. Just ask my son… Out of curiosity and fascination, he’s actually watched me achieve this feat first-hand more than once. 🙂 )
The lack of sleep finally caught up with me though and the tone of the week took a downward turn. A mommy friend was just diagnosed with breast cancer. . Whenever I hear news like this, I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach. I was planning to go birding that day and blog all about it– but instead there I stood in the grocery store, the get well cards fading into a blur as my eyes welled with tears.
I was searching for just the right card and flowers as a ‘pick-me-up’. I needed to do ~something~, anything for this friend.. and birding/blogging would just have to wait.
I ducked into the next aisle attempting to dry my eyes. As a steady stream of tears began to fall, I found myself pretending to read the cans of Raid (of all things) that happened to be in front of me, just to avoid drawing any attention to myself. My attempts to juggle my lack of sleep, birding, teaching, friends and family had all caught up with me… 
but I knew I had every right to cry, even if I wasn’t spread so thin.
I feel much better after finally getting a good night’s sleep and I know my friend is going to knock the socks off her cancer!
Last week was a sobering reminder to me that a Mom’s Big Year of birding involves a whole lot more than just the birds.
This past weekend was one of those that you want to bottle up and save for a rainy day. My brother-in-law got married (Yay Mike and Elizabeth!) and it was a weekend full of fun times with family and dear friends. Lucky for me, I have a ‘built-in’ birding buddy in the family—so, Uncle David and I had a chance to duck out and go birding in between the festivities! (Yay us!) The weather was not our friend this weekend (as you can see by our ‘drowned rat’ look in the photo)… but we went birding anyway.:-)
The family festivities were based about an hour south of DC—which some of my friends would consider the complete and utter end of the earth. Well, Uncle David and I drove an ~additional~ 45 minutes south to Point Lookout.. the southernmost point in Maryland’s western shore. My metropolitan Jersey friends would no doubt feel like they were truly at the end of the earth!
Pt. Lookout Lighthouse on a dreary day.
Our birding highlights included no new ticks for Mom’s Big Year.. but we had some great looks at a beautiful flock of cedar waxwings as well as about 200 great blue herons that took to the sky while we were there. It appears there must be a rookery and they were spooked by a passing eagle or something. It’s always great to squeeze in some birding with Uncle David any chance I can get! I know that having a sharp, fun, skilled and ‘always up for an adventure’ birding companion in the family is not something to take for granted. Every birder should be so lucky as to have an Uncle David.
David and I agreed the highlight of our morning spent at Point Lookout was our stop at Buzzy’s Country Store on the way home.
And trust me, a step back in time… at the end of the earth… is deserving of a blog post all its own.
Stay tuned & good birding!
Migration is here!
Well, my birthday was last week and I admit I took the opportunity to play the birthday card more than once. 🙂 We spend the holiday weekend back in my old stomping grounds of northern NJ. I ate several servings of dessert Friday night, went birding Sat morning and had a chance to visit with dear family and friends all weekend. What fun!
A visit to Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary was at the top of the list. It’s one of New Jersey Audubon’s Centers, just minutes from my childhood home. They happened to be hosting a family nature walk Sat morn, so I dragged my boys and hubby to join me. We had a great time (see pics below) and since I hadn’t been north of my Maryland home since last year, I added black-capped chickadee to my Mom’s Big Year list. Yay!
Scherman Hoffman is a special place to me. I clearly recall visiting when I was a high schooler, enjoying chats with the long-time director, Rich Kane, and asking Pete Dunne for advice on how to go about saving the last tract of woods in my hometown of Parsippany. In the late ’80’s, I took my first warbler ID course there. Great memories for sure.
Indeed, there’s no place like home.
This past week may have been Spring Break for the professor in me, but it was far from a break for the birder in me! It was ‘catch-up’ time….ticking birds for Mom’s Big Year! Fun!
My plans to get ahead on several weeks of class lecture prep went out the window, with local sightings of harlequin ducks and other fun birds posted Monday. There were several winter birds still out there on the coast of Maryland that I needed, so I sent a quick email out. Shortly after I sent it, I had several very kind offers from local birder buddies to get out in the field with me all over the state this week! Fun!
I’m still recovering… and soon you’ll know why..
Last Wed 1:11 am-bedtime…
followed by a 4:14 am wake-up for a trip to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to chase winter waterfowl for the day.
.
I’ve got a whole lot to tell about some really fun birds, including a long-tailed duck and gannets!
Every night I sit at my laptop to write you all about it….. BUT I fall asleep… 🙂
Tonight as I tried to squeeze in the last moments of daylight… I was outside pruning the bushes(despite being completely overtired) and accidentally clipped a string of Christmas lights still hanging. Yes, you heard me, Christmas lights.. you can laugh now.. as the wreath is still up too! (So, perhaps it’s not TOO late for me to send out those holiday cards after all. LOL!)
Such is life in a busy Mom’s Big Year, right. 🙂
Must get to bed now as migration is starting!
But I’ll post more soon!
Good night and good birding,
Nancy
Well, life has been a been a whirlwind since I last blogged. Continue reading
Well, now it’s time to play ‘catch up’. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity with my trip to Florida, a BIG snowstorm here in the northeast and the start to the spring semester for my new environmental science class. All fun for me!
Florida was fabulous! The Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival was a hit on SO many levels! I had a great time working with Wildside Nature Tours to bring incredible birds together with equally amazing people! I led 5 straight days of field trips for the festival and truly had a blast! Each trip and its guides and participants were unique. Everyone was engaged and made it such a rewarding time for me. It’s always so much fun reconnecting and leading trips with old friends and colleagues and meeting lots of new friends too!
Here are some highlights:
My flight home was cancelled on Sunday due to “Snowzilla”. We had 30″ of snow blanket our home in Maryland! As I was fretting and wringing my hands about my cancelled flight and the possibility that I might actually MISS my FIRST class of the spring semester/my new job (eeek!)… Skye, seabird counter extraordinaire, looked me square in the eyes and with his jovial smile said one word to me.
Lemonade.
That’s all I had to hear to give my attitude the 180 degree turn it needed. Cancelled flights yield more time for birding… and more birding I did! I took the extra time and thanks to fellow Wildside guide, Steve, had the great fortune of seeing a bird that I’ve been dreaming about seeing since I was 5 years old…. a male painted bunting!
This week on my day off, after getting the lunches packed and the kids off to school, I took a deep breath and realized it was the first day the house was quiet since my trip and after the kids had been home for 10 days straight due to the weather. It was a warm morning. The snow was covered by a thick blanket of fog as it started into a steady rain.. It was the PERFECT day to pull the covers back over my head and go straight to sleep again. And that I did.
By about 9:15 am I reached for my phone to check email as I was pondering all the things on the ‘to-do list’ that had been pushed aside in the whirlwind of activity these past few weeks. The mile-long list (including the unsent holiday cards!) made me pull the covers even higher over my head as I entertained the idea of another hour or two of sleep in my warm, cozy bed.. With the quiet in the house after all the hustle and bustle, some extra zzz’s were just way too tempting for this overtired mom.
A fellow local bird club member had just sent an email reporting 12 + Pine Siskins at his feeder. Knowing it was a bird I needed to see for the year and one that only came to feeders on occasion and could be missed…. I literally kicked my feet straight up in the air, covers flying off the bed and shot straight up. Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at his house and got the bird.
There was only ONE thing on this planet that could get me out of that bed that morning.
And you guessed it..
BIRDS.
and discovers herself along the way
A mom reinventing herself through her passion for birds.
LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE
Mom's Big Year 