Birding Or Twitching - Life On The Wing

This morning as I watched a couple of rib-eye-in-the sky who were peeking into our sliding glass door, freak out -- over spotting our cat walk across the living room, I thought about some of us who are now suddenly living "life on the wing."

Perhaps, we are a little freaked out too, as the daily news steadily adds layers of endangerment to our own worlds.

First of all, before I tell my little true life adventure traveling with one Central Florida local chapter of the National Audubon Society, I should preface this by admitting that I love birds. I also think highly of this organization and it’s efforts to protect, identify, and educate people about birds.

So, if I poke a little fun at our first birding adventure with them, it's primarily to illustrate a couple of lessons mother nature provides for us in the natural world, to help understand the artificial ones we humans have created.

Where Did All the Rare Birds Go?

We arrived before daylight, to the specified parking lot, to join a group of strangers who were members of a local National Audubon Society. They weren't a very large group, perhaps it was the ungodly hour that our mini-caravan of cars would follow the leader to a secret site guaranteed by them for the perfect "birding," that prevented them from being a larger body of like-minded people.

At least, that was my theory -- until my husband pointed out that there were at least forty people clamoring for a place on a party bus, to go to some sports event, in the same parking lot.

Only one among the Audubon Society group, appeared to be a twitcher, as he had flown in from Japan for this promised rare experience. First impressions made you think, that the rest of them seemed a little frail for the day's planned activities. For the next couple of hours we had no clue where we were going other than it seemed to be a secret site, somewhere on the East coast near a popular beach town.

Periodically, the leader of the caravan would come to an abrupt stop on the side of the road and everyone but us, seemed to know what we were looking for as binoculars and cameras came flying out of their vehicles, almost proceeding them.

Finally, we arrived at a gated and guarded entrance to a property, whereupon our leader went into the guard shack with a fistful of papers. The guard came back to each car and looked us over carefully with his flashlight. "Maybe we are at some part of the Kennedy Space Center," I whispered to my husband.

He looked at me a little strangely, grinned, and had the twinkling eyes glow about him, a look that I know all too well. Clearly, he knew something I didn't, but wasn't about to tell me just yet (waiting for the right moment).

Slowly the convoy inched along the tops of dirt dams built around large bodies of water. Then, everyone crept like thieves in the night along the bank to where our leader motioned for us to go.

Excited, I stood on tip-toe and whispered in my husband's ear, "Wow! This must be some private bird sanctuary. It's a shame it has to be so near some dirty old factory polluting the air. It really stinks here! Did anyone say what we are looking for, or where we are at?"

I got no answer, but that's normal because he is a little hard of hearing. It was driving me crazy not knowing where I was. Just as the sun was coming up, the little army of birdwatchers started oohing and ahhing and pointing. One of them got so excited, he nearly fell in the water. I didn't see anything special, just a lot of ordinary looking birds, even when some of them offered for us to look through their expensive high powered binoculars and cameras.

Then, they all got in their cars and again we inched along until someone spotted another rare bird. Suddenly, they all started piling out and tip-toeing to hiding places along the brush on the bank.

Well, by then, my curiosity had gotten the best of me, I was determined to know where exactly we were. Just as I was getting out of our car, I announced my intent to Bill, "If you won't tell me where we are and what we're looking for, I'm going to ask the leader! There are thousands of birds out here, and someone ought to be telling the public about this sanctuary!"

Smiling broadly, he said, "Oh, I'm sure the locals know it's here. It's the shit plant. I doubt if the rest of the world cares to know about it."

The old farm boy that I married, is pretty straight forward with his information. He's not one to call a waste treatment facility, anything but what it is, in the most plainest of terms.

Well, at least he didn't let me embarrass myself completely by rambling on and on, about what a great bird sanctuary we were in, and how the tourist books didn't list the location, etc.

So, getting back to my thoughts on this endangered world, both the human one and the non-human -- Knowing the difference between birding and twitching, isn’t exactly comforting when it comes to applying certain aspects of it to the current financial crisis sweeping the world.

This is especially true, when it comes to the current real estate market, and the wave-after-wave of foreclosures here in America.

For those of you on the outside of the bird world, "birding" is the surveillance and study of birds. It’s done by eye-balling and often using binoculars. What most people don’t know about it, is that it also involves using your ears, because birds are often “heard” first and identified more by sound, than visually.

Whereas, someone who is a “twitcher” is a person who travels near and far, in search of that elusive rare bird, so they can boast that it has been crossed off their bird list of rare and endangered birds.

So, you are probably wondering what birding and twitching have to do with the our current foreclosure crisis?

The answer is simple. It has to do with the delicate balance of knowing whether to believe your eyes or your ears, in deciding what kind of rare opportunity or danger, you might have. You might be flying in an upside down world, or momentarily grounded like a bird living life on the wing -- but you still need to be as focused as a falcon is after it's prey. Your quality of life and future depend upon it.

Here in Central Florida, the signs of "burn ups" are all around, usually found at every major stop light or intersection, they often read:

"I buy houses within 24 hours - Cash!"

or

"Bad credit OK, instant approval mortgages!"

"Rent to own, no money down."

Now, some of those common place road signs, have been replaced by human ones flipping and waving sandwich boards -- all vying to get you to look at vacant houses and developments. What isn't readily apparent, is that the men and women wielding these signs are among the homeless in our community. They get paid in cash at the end of their day. While it's great they can get some sort of daily pay, somehow I don't think this out-dated method of advertising is going to solve any one's real estate sales problems.

Then, there are a lot of "dudes" entering into this financial mess, people who think they are going to get rich off the miseries of those -- like our neighbor four doors down. When this nice young family bought their house about a year ago, Florida was still in the throes of no money down, no credit needed loans.

They were proudly going after the American dream to own their first home. He worked as a foreman in the once booming construction business. He was first cut back in hours, then laid off. They fell behind in their mortgage payments for awhile, with the wife's job as a sometimes substitute teacher, not making enough to get them by.

After five months out of work, the husband finally got another job. Only, about that time, their adjustable rate mortgage zoomed from $1400 a month to nearly $3900. This corresponded with escalating home owners association fees, property taxes, and mandatory amenity center fees to use the pool.

It’s a beautiful home that they owe more than $300,000 on, now valued at less than half that. Any day now, they too will be among the one in fifty families without a home as eviction by the bank has been ordered. Now, almost daily "dudes" are contacting them, not to help them find a way out of the situation -- but to buy anything they might be planning to leave behind for pennies on the dollar value.

The husband with tear brimmed eyes told us, they will walk away from everything and go back to live with his wife's elderly parents. With four kids, that's a family of six, moving into a two bedroom eleven hundred square foot home. It was either that or move into a motel, or move into one of the newest "tent cities" that have sprung up across the nation.

Like all the birds we saw on that Audubon trip, this family and many others have to do what they can to survive. For the birds "home" is no longer a forest, a swamp, or another natural setting -- it's become a human waste facility. Sadly, now it's come down to tent cities for humans too in this country, and to my way of thinking that's a whole lot of waste too.

While some reports of the real daily issues that are happening to real people, make the nightly news and newspapers -- the not-so-much talked about ever twitching suppression factor seems evident.

It seems like it's OK to talk about failing banks, corporations, rich people losing everything, the falling stock market, even unemployment -- but let's just barely mention the heartbreaking human dramas, playing out in every corner of America.

It just makes me just wonder how many human rare birds will become extinct in the aftermath of all of this. As for the birds, I guess they are watching people living life-on-the-wing, and wondering if they too will move into the dump. They are counting on us to not say, "Move over feathered friend."

I know, as a mother and grandmother, that there is a lot to be said for “kid power.” Young people have an amazing power and role in helping save this planet when it comes to conservation and endangered species efforts.

There is a program called Pennies for the Planet, that has children saving spare change and donating it to help:

• Save wild habitats
• Protecting wild species
• Protecting endangered species
• Making the planet greener
• Making the planet cleaner