Am I Cut Out To Be A Birdwatcher?

This morning the alarm rang at 6 o'clock. I was in the middle of a dream about dancing. I was none too happy about being woken up from dancing. In my dreams I am a regular Ginger Rogers. When awake I dance like an old lady with arthritis and spinal stenosis. That explains why I was not happy to be woken up on a Saturday. I swung my legs out of bed and wondered, "Why am I getting up this early on a Saturday?" I had just enough energy this week to get me through Thursday. I had a birding field trip. We were to meet at 7 on the east side of Round Lake in Andover to look at birds. Did I really want to go? I reluctantly got out of bed and dressed warmly to see the birds. Through my red and puffy eyes I did see birds. I saw a flock of common mergansers (see photo above). They may be common but I've never spotted one and knew what I was seeing before. One birder had a spotting scope. The spotting scope looks like a short telescope and sits on a tripod. He let me peek and there were two sand hill cranes whopping it up and bobbing their heads. The call they make reminds me of a cartoon sound. There is a bald eagle nest on the western edge of Round Lake. We saw the father and a juvenile sitting on the edge of the icy lake. The mother was hunkered down in the nest. We saw gulls and song sparrows, killdeer and red-winged blackbirds. We saw a line of Canadian geese fly over. The instructor asks why they are flying in a straight line. In my head I'm thinking these are illiterate geese and don't know how to form a V so they make an I instead. Turns out I am partially right. Most geese this time of year are flying in pairs. Geese don't mate until the 3rd year. These are probably 1 or 2 year old geese flying together. In the end I was glad I went. But tomorrow I am sleeping in and I hope to have another dancing dream. Later in the day I was talking to a friend of mine and telling him about my chickens. I told him these chickens are triggering mother hen feelings in me that were long dormant. My peeps are making me a little anxious. I keep looking at them to make sure they are okay. Sometimes they stand there and their eyes start to close and they get a little wobbly on their feet and they drop to the ground and sprawl out with their necks extended. I think they're dying! I poke them and they wake up, they're only sleeping. It weird how they go from awake to sleep so quickly. My friend is not at all sympathetic to my plight. He says I should worry about how I get them into the barbeque sauce. Ewww. When I got home I looked in the box and one chicken was missing. Dwight, the rooster, flew the coop. He was lying on the floor next to the brooder box. I picked him up and put him back. That sealed it. Now was the time to move them to the box with higher sides. They're in the recycling box now and they seem happy and probably a little warmer too.