2 Days, 27 Life Birds by Dee Fairbanks Simpson

So, sometimes my boss will call me up and start a conversation by saying, "You are so pretty… your hair looks soooo good today…" Given that we are on the phone and she is in Colorado, I know that when she starts a conversation like that, the project she is about to ask me to do is not going to be fun. I call these my "flattery gets you everywhere cause I'm just that stupid and vain" projects.

I have been on a "flattery gets you everywhere cause I'm just that stupid and vain" project for about 3 months now, and on one of the rougher days, the project manager (who is also a birder) offered me a bribe - "Stick with it, and when you come out to California, I'll take you birding."

I replied, "Will you take me to see a California Condor?" She said she would, and that is really all that has kept me going the last few months.

So finally, the time came… last week I headed out to California. Work was not good, mostly my failing, which made it all the harder to get through. Finally Friday rolled around. The manager, as promised, picked me up, and took me birding for the whole weekend. I actually got my first life bird of the trip from her kitchen, and things just got better from there.

In addition to two life critters (sea lions and sea otters) I came back from the trip with 27 life birds: Allen's hummingbird, Brewer's blackbird, wrentit, brown towhee, Say's phoebe, California quail, whimbrel, Brandt's cormorant, black turnstone, golden plover, white-tailed kite, semi-palmated plover, Herman's gull, long-tailed duck, pacific loon, surf scoter, snow goose, ross's goose, white-fronted goose, tri-colored blackbird, bushtit, black oystercatcher, pelagic cormorant, California condor, golden-crowned sparrow, and Oregon junco. A few of those I had seen before, but never photographed. If you want to see all the pictures, you can see them on my web site:

http://deemotivation.blogspot.com/2012/03/unofficial-deemotivation-event-birding.html

Believe it or not, my photographic life list is up to 274 now. I am hoping that my next project will be in India as my co-worker there is also a birder and photographer...