Same Old, Same Old

One of the deep pleasures and comforts of birding is finding the same species in the same place year after year.  In other words, the Anna's Hummingbird that I have seen in the exact same blackberry bramble every year is quite possibly offspring of the one I first noticed there five years ago.

This was the case yesterday in Skagit. Last summer there was a pair of Killdeer just west of the bridge by the church on Fir Island Road. Saturday morning in the same area there was a pair of Killdeer doing their hyper-sensitive, hyper-vocal thing. Same pair? Their kids? Who knows, but encountering the cyclical nature of animal life, and affirming that landscape and its food offerings are indeed destiny for birds resounds deeply. It's like being in the bosom of family and intimate friends after a long separation--their habits, inflections, idiosyncrasies are so ingrained in our memories, that we involuntarily anticipate them.

And on a more superficial note, who can resist these birds--those jaunty stripes? That vivid red eye ring? The comical bobbing? And fledglings are even more endearing in their long-legged fluffiness. The shots above are from a brood on UW campus a few years back.