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Why we need the Dip
Yesterday I spent a good portion of my day, between dropping my son off at school and picking him up again at the end of the day, in the low mountains of northwest North Carolina looking for a Rough-legged Hawk. It’s not a life bird – I’ve had the good fortune to see the species farther north where’s it’s far more common – but it’s one I’d never seen within the boundaries of my home state. And at under 2 hours away, it was close enough that I could scoot out, nab the bird, and be back in time to do the carpool dad thing at my kid’s elementary school. The plan was fail-proof.
I’m not what you’d call a serious state lister, though I have unapologetically leaned that way at times. I enjoy seeing the parts of North Carolina that the quest for a respectable NC list has taken me. I’ve seen high-elevation spruce forests along the ridges of the Appalachians with nesting boreal warblers and the bathtub-warm waters of the Gulf Stream with its tropicbirds and impossible Pterodromas. I’m not a native North Carolinian, but birding the state for 10 years has given me a sense of ownership here. I feel like I could be.
Anyway, this Rough-legged Hawk has been seen intermittently on a christmas tree farm in Alleghany County (christmas trees being a major cash crop in North Carolina if you didn’t know) for the better part of a month. It preferred a field that was out of rotation, with larger trees that had been spared the saw spaced widely. It looked not unlike a tiny patch of northern Canada plopped on top of an Appalachian ridge. And with the temperature hovering around freezing, it felt that way too.
I had given myself 2.5 hours to find the bird before I had to head back. And so, for 2.5 hours the countdown to the dip, the missing of the bird, began.
You can sort of chart your attitude as the time passes on and the bird remains unseen. I tend to start these things full of unearned enthusiasm, which eventually gives way to crushing resignation as the time comes and passes with nary a sign of your target. Finding a great bird, or even seeing a great bird, is a high that we birder know well if we’re lucky. But the yin to its yang, the dip, is one that is too often quietly filed away. Blamed on the weather or the tide or the bird simply moving on. Most of the time it’s just a matter of luck. Either good or bad. And what are you going to do about that?
For me, the time came and the bird didn’t. My time was for naught, from a state list perspective. But it wasn’t a waste. I tallied a few new county ticks. I watched a few Common Ravens wheel around in the north wind. I gained a new appreciation for the christmas tree farm as habitat. I traveled to a part of the state that many, if not most, of my fellow North Carolinians, will never see. I attempted to mask my frustration in this bit of writing (successfully? maybe).
My point being that the ticks are what we live for, but the dips are important. We hate nemesis birds, but we love them too, because just feels so good to finally connect with them. One of these days I’ll probably see a Rough-legged Hawk in North Carolina, and it will be all the more satisfying because I missed this one.
Or, at least that’s what I’m telling myself now.
Join the American Birding Association at www.aba.org!
Source: http://blog.aba.org/2015/02/why-we-need-the-dip.html
