Birdies all around me, but no time to see them!

oh no! rain, rain, go away!

This morning I opened up my email to find 171 emails from the PA birding listserv. I know--crazy! Still, apparently every warbler and bird that hangs out in PA just arrived this weekend, and everyone in PA saw them EXCEPT ME. I was busy toodling around doing things like having brunch and going to the lake with my new gal! I saw a few birds here and there, but nothing like the warbler fest that everyone else saw. It seems that while I was goofing off, having fun, the birds were arriving and unpacking their little bags. I've really got to get in on this action!

I'm wondering if I could possibly make myself wake up super early and do some birding before work. Hmm... I HATE waking up early--not a good trait for a birder. Wait! Come to think of it, I could take a couple hours of authorized absence time some day this week, go birding in the morning, and just come in at like 10 or 11 instead of 8:30! Now THAT'S an idea! My little gears are turning!

This coming weekend, Gretchen and I will be in Cape May, and I'm really hoping to get a lot of lifers. I may have mentioned this before, but I checked the Cape May list and found that 40 of the "common" and "fairly common" birds seen there in the spring would be lifers for me -- can you imagine? When I went to Cape May's Fall Weekend the first time (when I first met some of the Flock), I got 31 lifers. That's the most I've ever tallied, having gotten 23 lifers in Oil Creek in 2007 when I birded with Julie Zickefoose at the first Oil Creek Birding Festival. Ah, the memories of both of those weekends will be burned into my brain's hard drive forever!

So the thought of potentially getting up to 40 lifers in one weekend is quite exciting--what a challenge! That would put me well over 200--FINALLY. I think Baby G (that's Gretchen's street name! Mine is, quite fittingly I think, D-Thug) and I will pretty much exhaust every minute of every day birding.

OH NO! I just checked the weather for the weekend this morning at weather.com and was really disappointed to see that they have rain down for every day except Saturday. DANGIT! I'm hoping that changes as the week drags on. Keep your fingers crossed for us in Cape May, and for the Flock down at New River in West Virginia! Come on, weather gods!