It was during the first few years after I had left the United States Army. Jeff, a friend, and I spent time in wild places, mostly patches of woods near our home in Freeport, Illinois. We ventured to the woods about once a week for over a year, and it was during those excursions that my curiosity of the natural world was awakened.
Jeff had a canoe, and one day we launched it in the Pecatonica River from Freeport's Krape Park, and paddled upstream until we found a spot we had not previously explored. Jeff tied the canoe to a tree while I scampered up a hill. At the top was a stand of White Pines, and I came face to face with a bird at eye level on a lower branch. It had a mysterious, striking black and white face. It looked at me, seemingly unconcerned for a few seconds, then flitted away.
My mom's bird feeder attracted numerous birds, but while growing up I wasn't interested enough to learn the species that appeared at our kitchen window. But I know chickadees were one of them because my mom mentioned them occasionally. The encounter on the top of that hill among the White Pines was the closest I had come to one. I suddenly felt the compulsion to know more.
A few days later I bought my first bird book. After glancing through the pages for a while I concluded that the bird I encountered was a Black-capped Chickadee. Now I live in southern Illinois, below the dividing line between Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees. All of ours are the latter species, one of which is pictured below.
I now have almost 450 species of birds on my life list, but fondly remember the encounter on the top of that hill, the one that launched me on a life of birding, fulfilling adventures in nature, and numerous lessons from the natural world.
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| Carolina Chickadee |
