A couple of years ago I started keeping a list of the bird species I've seen--what a serious birdwatcher would call a "life list." I am not such a birdwatcher, but after reading an interesting memoir by one, I decided to total up whatever birds I had seen, and was pleasantly surprised when I counted into the low 90s. Since then I've added a few, and last night I encountered my one hundredth. It was a bird worthy of a milestone--a trumpeter swan, the world's largest waterfowl. A pair of them actually, and I saw them in, of all places, the pond in the petting zoo at Domino's Farms, which my wife and I pass on our regular walking route. Naturally I didn't have a camera, but here's a look at one:
A while after we stopped to watch them they began rapidly bobbing their heads (alarm behavior?) and shortly thereafter took off, making their namesake call (listen to it
here). It was like watching a small plane taking off.
Who knows what #101 will be, but I doubt it's going to top this.
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