Birdwatching

I don't do it, of course, but there is something fundamentally comforting about the idea of birdwatching. Just the mellow folks who must do it - I picture dudes who look like Ed Begley Jr or Michael Murphy and women with vague Judy Davis-ness gathered at the entries of parks, murmuring about how they just espied a Northern Ringneck Grackle or something, before going somewhere nice for dinner in the dusk.

Now 9 gazillion pages of birdwatching scratchings will be made available online:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/03/26/pp.bird.usgs/index.html

These notes would be interesting in the sense of placing them in historical context: "I was coming back from seeing the Pineneedle dodo when a little street ruffian came breathlessly running to me with the news President Cleveland was dead..." or "At just-gloaming I spotted my query, and behind the Maine speckled tern I caught, along the horizon, a glimmer of the Soviets' manmade moon they have sent into the heavens..."

Plus Roger Tory Peterson always seemed so nice!