Sunday Birding from My Desk

Roger Tory Peterson, the famous birder and father of the modern field guides, is once rumored to have stayed in bed one morning while an eager group of scientists and birders went looking for birds. As the story goes, upon returning, the group boasted how they had seen and heard 40 species, a good haul for any morning. Still in bed, Peterson rolled over and nonchalantly said, "Oh, is that all? I heard 50 from here."

Now, it would be pretty presumptuous of me to compare myself to Peterson, but I have miniature moments. While sitting at my computer this morning, my cat in the window, I heard a common bird, but a rare voice to my neighborhood of Astoria, Queens: a Downy Woodpecker. It was comforting to know that even though I'm cooped up while working at the computer that there is a world unseen and unheard to most just outside of my window.