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(george rizer) |
Bring the Family
Who Globe film critic Ty Burr and his daughter Natalie, 11
What Birding Where Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge. (Brookline Bird Club trips: massbird.org/bbc/BBCTrips.htm)
Of my two daughters, Natalie has always been my birding buddy - as a toddler, she kept obsessively returning to the great blue heron illustration in my Peterson guide - but we'd never made it to Mount Auburn for the guided birdwatching walks during spring migration.
This year we finally got there, and it was worth the sleepy eyes. Led by members of the 95-year-old Brookline Bird Club, the walks are casual affairs that start out from the Mount Auburn gates nearly every day at 6 a.m. in April and May. Eight of us, strangers of varying ages, wandered the roads and pathways, searching the chilly morning for signs of life.
At first, we birded by ear, picking out the thin strains of one species or another high in the trees. Intriguing and, for an 11-year-old, pretty frustrating.
As the sun rose higher and we pushed deeper into the cemetery, though, feathered dino-descendants started popping out everywhere. Natalie put five new species on her life list: blue-headed vireo, black-and-white warbler (right), palm warbler, a merlin swooping high overhead, and - the giddy highlight - a ruby-crowned kinglet strutting its tiny stuff mere feet from her binoculars.
"When can we go again?" she asked as we skedaddled through the front gates in time to drive to school. Not soon enough, clearly. [Ty Burr]
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
