Day 8: The Polite Way to Talk About Bird Virginity

Day Eight: The Polite Way to Talk About Bird Virginity

6/14/11:

Have you ever gone on a hike?

Have you ever gone on a hike off-trail?

Have you ever gone on a hike off-trail carrying a medium-sized squawk box?

Have you ever gone on a hike off-trail carrying a medium-sized squawk box with someone you don’t really know?

 

Imagine doing just that.

Imagine doing just that for six hours under the Arizona sun.

Sounds great, yeah?

Actually, it kind of was. Because surveying was more than the pain and the heat and the tedium; surveying was a new form of intimacy. This I discovered on day two of Goshawk surveying. Switching it up a bit (Yelena and I both convinced that the other’s bio intern walked slower), Quentin and I had set out for the foothills of Bill Williams Mountain.

And there we were: Quentin, myself, and all of Bill Williams before us. Although we were technically not to speak for fear of upsetting the Goshawks (which ones? where?), we degenerated into conversation pretty damn quick.

Hour one, we talked about birds.

Hour two, we talked about birding.

Hour three, we talked about “life birds.” (The term for when a birder identifies a bird they have never seen before. On this day, my life bird was a stellar jay. According to Yelena, who had a very similar conversation with Quentin during their survey time together, the ‘life bird’ term is nothing more than a polite way to talk about bird virginity.)

Hour four, we talked about birds that sound like and could be mistaken for a Goshawk, but are not (i.e., Northern Flicker, Cooper's Hawk, Sharp-Shinned Hawk).

Hour five, Quentin confided in me that he’d been a birder since he was ten-years old.

Hour six, we told our life stories, talked about our hopes, voiced our fears and shared our dreams. (Fun fact: Quentin aspires to one day menace people from the back of a megatherium.)

Ok, so maybe it didn’t go like that exactly, but somewhere in those hours, superficial talk stopped cutting it. It was just the two of us and relatively quickly any awkwardness or self-consciousness dissipated. Yup, Quentin totally fell, and yup, I may have almost gotten lost, and yup, that’s just how it was.

Photos: 1. Quentin's baby prairie dog impression 2. Quentin, Bill Williams statue, me