Plugged Into

Yesterday met a dad and his thirteen-year-old son out birding. I was impressed that the kid was not plugged into the ubiquitous alternate reality everyone is plugged into these days, but was actually seeing and listening and observing and preserving all that was before him of the natural world. And the other quality that both father and son had in abundance was generosity of knowledge, pointing out to me what birds I first of all wouldn't have detected and second of all wouldn't have known: ovenbird, blue-gray gnat-catcher, magnolia warbler, hermit thrush. It is a good day when one makes not only bird friends but also the human kind.