President's Corner
Birding with Daisy
by John Shenot
This summer I said farewell to my most frequent birding companion, a small dog with a huge personality named Daisy. She was seven weeks shy of 17 years old and is sorely missed.
My wife and I brought Daisy home when she was seven weeks old and weighed just seven pounds. I could literally hold her in the palm of my hand! Over the years, she and I took several thousand walks together and became best friends. We would get out first thing in the morning nearly every single day, and I would almost always carry binoculars.
Birding with Daisy was challenging. She had an uncanny knack for stopping when I needed to move and moving when I needed to stop. I would see an intriguing bird ahead of us and want to move quickly for a better look, but she had other ideas. Short of dragging her, we weren't going anywhere. On the other hand, if I was in the right spot and trying to focus on an active bird, it was virtually certain that would be when Daisy decided to pull me— forcefully—down the trail.
Birding with Daisy was difficult, sometimes even frustrating, but it also taught me useful lessons. Because we went out nearly every day, I became much more aware of daily and seasonal variations in bird activity. I learned to bird by ear, to the point where more than half the species I would record on a typical walk were “heard only.” I also learned the value of patience, especially in her final year when it could take up to an hour for us to cover about a quarter mile. It was amazing to discover, as we walked at a snail's pace, how many interesting birds might eventually pass through a place that I would have missed if we were moving faster. Daisy is gone now, sadly, but birding by ear and slow birding will remain part of my routine.
