Cape May Post #3: Three Little Birds

Cape May 2010 Post #2: A Jeff sandwich on Flock bread. With a Liz pickle (and a hell of a lot of name-dropping)

Let's go back to Thursday.  I had gotten into town late (12 hours in the car and punchy as hell).  Delia and I were in our jammies when a text came from Jeff asking if we were staying up late.  We were invited to Mark Garland's house where Jeff, Liz, Bill and a few others were happily imbibing some Scotch.

There were introductions all around...I don't remember a few of them, but one stuck in my head.  But not until later when Delia started hollering about it.  The one that had us cussing and squealing was Richard Crossley.  Yeah ,the Richard Crossley who writes field guides.  Well, we geeked out totally and for the rest of the weekend, we called him "Richard Freakin' Crossley!".

I didn't really want to drink, having come off a twelve hour drive, but as the Scotch was poured and re-poured, I thought I might like to try it.  I didn't like it.  So I sipped a little more.

It was so, so, so very cool to be sitting in a living room with all of these massively talented birders and authors. (Delia told me later that I looked like a kid at Christmas, sitting on the floor just smiling at everyone.)

A call came in.  The words "massive flight" were used.  Everyone got up.

Into the cars and down to the boardwalk on Beach Ave.  We looked up, and there were hundreds of birds overhead.  Now, remember...this is 11 o'clock at night.  The birds were lit up from underneath by the street lights and they resembled fireflies...blowing leaves....embers from a camp fire.  Hundreds and hundreds of them.  Some were falling into the street, exhausted.  I got my lifer Savannah's Sparrow right there on Beach Ave.  In the dark.
Robins.  Chipping sparrows.  Yellow-rumped warblers.  Woodcocks.  And many others that were not identified. The biggest bird spectacle I have ever seen.


I have never birded at night, unless there were owls involved.  This was something completely different.

Wow.  I don't know who has the better legs, Jeff or Delia.



We were right outside Morrow's Nut House. Seemed fitting.

The lights were getting in the way...


We moved behind the convention center to get out of the light.

There in the dark, it was much easier to see the birds.  They were lit up but the lights were no longer in our line of sight.
My neck was getting sore, so I had the brilliant idea to lay down on the boardwalk to enjoy the birds in comfort.  And everyone else eventually joined me.

Somehow Delia and I were lucky enough to snuggle up to Jeff for warmth, and Liz completed the dish.
A Jeff Gordon sandwich on Flock bread.  With a Liz pickle on top.

Cape May 2010 Post #1: Also known as "Singing Karaoke with Sweet Caroline, the Town Lesbian"

Back from Cape May and reeling around trying to find "real life" again...because what happens in Cape May isn't real.  It's a fantasy that birders fall into every year and the time comes, too soon, to wake up and go home.
My posts are not going to be in chronological order...I'm starting with Friday night, since it's the easiest.
The scene:  The C-View, a little sports bar in town, which proclaims to be the oldest tavern in Cape May
The people:  Delia, Laura, Beth, me, a few of Beth's friends and a local or two
We were sitting there drinking, having a great time.  Delia explained "jammers" to me:  Someone who "looks" gay but isn't.  We were puzzling over a woman at the bar, and at one point the woman came over to us drunkenly and started chatting us up.  Turns out she was puzzling over us too.
She described herself as Cape May's "Town Lesbian" and proceeded to lead us in a searing rendition of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline".  And gave us grief for not singing louder and more robustly.  
Sorry, drunken stranger. 

But check out Beth....she even got the "Bah Bah Bah's" right!

Meet me in New Jersey

Back in the fall of 2007, I agreed to go meet some fellow bird bloggers in Cape May, New Jersey.  The lineup was originally much larger, but in the end only four of us were there to meet on that beautiful shore.



Delia
Susan Merchant
Laura
and moi

I remember it being so strange, so awkward, to meet these people that I had only known through my computer screen up until then.  I had flown all the way to New Jersey to go birding with strangers??


 From that first meeting, from jokingly calling ourselves "The Flock", a wave...a movement...a thing has occurred.  Now numbering in the teens, we are a group...a passel...a force.
From all over the country, we gather to laugh, to love, to bird, to cherish. To giggle uncontrollably.  To be shushed by trip leaders.  To ingest very large amounts of wine.  To get glared at by other, more responsible birders.

To quote Delia in a comment about our last Cape May Weekend:
"I don't know why we all don't just admit that, with the exception of KatDoc, we all went to Cape May to see each other and be rowdy! Were there even any birds there?"


I cherish these women (and one man) so much more than I ever thought possible.
In a little over 24 hours, I will be packing the car and heading to Cape May once again, to frolic in the waves,
to cry at the peregrines and osprey overhead, to get frustrated over shorebirds, and to once again wrap my arms around my Flock.

We are our own Paparazzi

When I first heard this song*, all of the photos of the Flock, in all its incarnations, came flooding into my mind. When we are all together, we are constantly snapping away at each other with our cameras like crazed tourists.
Yes, we go to birding festivals to see the birds. But it's the faces of our friends that make the trips memorable.
I'm in desperate need of new photos of my peeps. I have been recycling the same ones over and over.
*I adore Lady Gaga. Can't stop listening to this song!

Next festival for me is New River Bird and Nature Festival. Click here to learn more.
(Hey, you Flock members and quasi-Flock members? If you want to go, email me at capricorn1273ATcinci.rr.com so we can talk about lodging. We can try to fill the Farmhouse again. Seriously. We can get a good deal.)

And if I can swing it (i.e. Geoff doesn't have kittens about it), I want to see the great open spaces of North Dakota at the Potholes and Prairies Festival in June.