On my Friday field trip at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival I helped Bill Clark (perhaps the most widely recognized raptor expert in North America) lead a trip along Old Port Isabella Road looking for Alpomado Falcon and other raptors. This Harris’ Hawk was on a electric pole right over the road, and actually let us drive right under it. We stopped at several distances for good looks, and, in my case, for photos out the van window. It would have been off before the van behind us had their looks if we had presumed to open a van door to get out…but as it was it could not have been more cooperative.

It certainly saw me leaning out the window!

Harris Hawks’ are communal hunters…cooperative hunters…you might even say pack hunters. A group of Harris’ will quarter a field together trying to flush game, and they work together to pursue and even head off potential prey. That fact makes them the ideal starter bird for falconers…as the falconer just assumes the roll of the dominant bird in the hawk’s pack. Which is, of course, how the first wild canines became domesticated.

Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. 

And for the Sunday Thought. It is both exhausting and refreshing to spend several days in the field with folks who share an interest in all things bird. Birders are easy to be with…if you are one. It might drive a non-birder crazy in short order. Part of my job is to teach others how to speak birder…so I am very aware of the language of birding and the underlying attitudes toward the world. A shared experience and a shared response lead to a shared language…and to an easy relationship. It builds community across very different personalities…across quite disparate views on any number of subjects beyond the scope of birds.

And of course, it is the same in the spirit. A shared experience and a shared response lead to a shared language and an easy relationship. The language of the spirit is easy to recognize by anyone who has ever spoken it…and it cuts across denominations, and even, in my experience, across religions to make it possible for very dissimilar people to easy in each other’s company…to experience a community that transcends personality and culture.

I can recognize another birder when I see on, after only moments of talk. And I can recognize those who have been touched by the spirit in the same way. A shared experience and a shared response. That is all that matters.

Happy Sunday.