A Moving Experience

Fresh Start: A juvenile Northern Cardinal checks out our new place.

I hate boxes.

I hate stepping around them. I hate taping them together. I hate filling them with stuff, then lugging them down multiple flights of stairs and wondering how I'll fit them into my car.

I hate finding them in odd corners, opening them and finding my life's belongings wrapped up in 10-year-old pages from defunct alternative newspapers, which reminds me how pathetic and old I'm getting. I hate wondering where they are, and once finding them, trying to figure out where to put them next.

And this is all I've done all summer. Moving SUCKS. Glenn has finally moved out to Gainesville to join me, but this meant (1) moving out of our place in California, where 10 years of random crap had prodigiously, yet stealthily, accumulated, (2) simultaneously moving out of my tiny pied-a-terre in Gainesville, which was too small for all this stuff, and (3) moving INTO a bigger place in Gainesville. Orthogonally related to all this was (4) sorting through and discarding tons of stuff from my high school and college years still at my parents' place, in preparation for their possible (but not imminent) move. My heart nearly broke as I shredded dozens of absolutely hilarious letters from my sophomore roommate and my freshman-boyfriend-who-turned-out-to-be-gay. The idea of paying for and dealing with yet another moving box was just too awful.

All this misery came to a head last weekend, when both Glenn and the movers arrived at our new place. Between packing and unpacking stuff, watching poor Glenn do battle with both jet lag and an uncooperative wireless router, and trying to figure out WHY our Florida renters' insurance policy costs four times more than our old policy in California ("This is Florida", was the best answer my insurance agent could come up with), I haven't had much time for birding or blogging. Yup, it sucks to be me.

But the payoff for all this stress is significant: Among the charms of our new place are much-improved backyard birding opportunities. The feeder at my old place attracted a fair number of birds, but was in a thoroughly dismal location:

Here's the same feeder now: near real live trees!

We already have a number of Tufted Titmice and Carolina Chickadees coming by regularly:

A family of Northern Cardinals (an adult male and female and two juveniles) comes by several times a day as well—at my old place, it took about three months for the birds to warm up to my feeder.

There are also a lot of Carolina Wrens, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, and Blue Jays in the area that we hope will drop by: we've put up a suet feeder and a hummingbird feeder to make the place more interesting for them.

Meanwhile, fall migration is slowly but surely starting up. We went by Palm Point Park yesterday in search of migrant warblers, and found a Black-and-white Warbler and several Prothonotary Warblers. The Prothonotary was a lifer for Glenn:

At San Felasco Hammock State Park this morning, we saw Yellow-throated Warblers, Northern Parulas, Worm-eating Warblers, American Redstarts, and a Black-and-white Warbler. The park was quite birdy (and buggy); I'm sure there were a lot of good birds in there that we missed.

And back home, there's almost always something flitting about in the back yard. There's nothing like the company of birds to make a random building filled with half-empty boxes feel like home.

Best. Spring Break. Ever. (Part 1)

Look at this guy. Really. Just look at him. Then look in the mirror and ask yourself how you could possibly deserve to share a planet with a creature this gorgeous.

And once you've scraped your jaw back off the floor, take a deep breath and try to convince a non-birder that Painted Buntings are not exotics imported from the jungles of Borneo, but fellow Americans: they winter in Florida and summer in Texas and Oklahoma, according to The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America .

My week-long spring break was filled with such wonders. After my brief trip to California, Glenn followed me back to Gainesville for two weeks of Florida birding and bird photography. Upon arriving at my place, he immediately scored four lifers: Northern Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, Carolina Chickadees, and Tufted Titmice were flocking my feeder, along with the usual flock of Chipping Sparrows.

I couldn't wait to show him everything I'd seen. Normally, I love birding alone, but it's sad to see something great and have nobody to share it with, and I've had too many sad moments birding in Gainesville. So I planned a dream day of photographer-friendly birding for our first full day together in Florida: a morning at Lake Wauberg, in the southern part of Paynes Prairie State Park , followed by a break for the excellent pizza at nearby Blue Highway in Micanopy, then an afternoon looking at gators and waders at La Chua Trail.

As we entered the park and headed towards Lake Wauberg, we saw a large herd of deer and a flock of Wild Turkeys (another lifer for Glenn) just off the side of the road. Things were looking good. In the trees by the lake, I heard an insistent drone of an unfamiliar song, and discovered that the Northern Parulas were back in force. To Glenn's frustration, they stayed high in the treetops, resisting most of our attempts to photograph them. This was the best I could do:

We spent a couple of hours at the boardwalk by the lake, watching Bald Eagles, Anhingas, and Grey Catbirds—all typical birds around here, but uncommon or non-existent back in California.

The birding at La Chua was unremarkable, but still fun: we got there around 2:30, and most of the herons and egrets seemed to have gone missing, but the afternoon sun brought out a jaw-dropping inventory of reptiles: dozens of turtles of all shapes and sizes, alligators ranging in size from 8 inches to 8 feet, and ponds covered with slithering black water snakes. Here's a soft-shelled turtle with a very odd nose:

We were the last ones to leave the park before it closed (the ranger locked the gate behind us as we pulled out of the parking lot). But just before leaving, I stopped by the horse barn near the trailhead to look for the now-resident Harris' Sparrow, which I thought would be a great treat for Glenn—and he found it before I did! Yet another lifer for him.

After leaving La Chua, we dropped by the Paynes Prairie overlook off Highway 441 to see if anything interesting was coming in as the sun set. The area sounded birdy, and there seemed to be flying critters everywhere. Unfortunately, a preponderance of these were mosquitos, so we beat a quick retreat for home.

It had been a day of doing things I'd done a million times before since moving out here, but it was the most fun I've ever had here. Having someone to share the fun with makes all the difference.

And in the next few days, the birding was only going to get better.