Field Notes From Someone Who Was There
Learned the hard way, remembered the next time.The field is a remarkably efficient teacher. It doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t slow down so you can catch up. It simply lets you get things wrong, sometimes repeatedly, until you either notice or move on. I’ve done both, though not always in the right order. Most of what I know about birds didn’t come from books or charts. It came from standing in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with too much confidence and not enough patience. The field has a way of correcting that. I once spent an entire morning…
