The strangest scam in Bangkok?

I have an hour to myself on our last night in Bangkok. We have been in far northern Thailand, where there is nothing but tree-covered mountains stretching as far as the eye can see, and silence broken only by the calls of birds. Now there is everything, everywhere, all at once: Bleary-eyed tourists in bars. Massage parlors and "massage" parlors. Ganesha shrines laden with flowers and bananas and packets of barbecue-squid-flavored potato chips. Stray dogs looking up at me with those liquid, pleading eyes. Plants taking root in every crack in the concrete. Skinny cats scurrying over rooftops. Squirrels climbing palm trees. Every molecule of air carries that smell that hits you the instant you get out of an airport in Southeast Asia -- tropical fruit and diesel fumes, sewers and jasmine, open drains and chilli-infused smoke from the woks of street vendors.

Namtok Mae Surin National Park, Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand

Asok district, Bangkok (thank you, Frank Gallo, for the pic)

I find a nice-looking bar down the lane way from our hotel, with an empty table on the sidewalk. Great, I'll just sit here quietly. The condensation is beading nicely on the outside of my glass of white wine, and nobody has noticed me sitting here observing them -- surely this the very best state of being. And then I feel the eyes on me. A woman kneeling at my feet, on the street. From the instant I see the look in her eyes, I can tell that whatever this is about, it isn't going to be good. She thrusts a tiny bamboo cage into my hands. As if there wasn't already enough life crammed into this Bangkok lane way, here in the cage are about twenty sparrow-sized birds. I can feel their warmth through the bars of the cage; sense their panic as they try to flap their wings and find they can't; hear them cheeping, cheeping, cheeping. All these eyes -- too many black, adrenalized eyes -- are staring at me, pleading with me to DO something.

It is really a pity I didn't have a camera.
Or perhaps the pity is that I took Art all the way to the
end of high school but apparently didn't absorb a great deal.

The woman looks like she has had a hard day on the road getting here from one of those hot, flat rural areas outside the city, where the air is like soup and the sky is always burning white -- except at sunset, when the smog makes for the most epic sunsets imaginable. She looks at me with the same pleading eyes. "Good luck," she says, miming opening the cage door to set the birds free. If I pay her 400 baht, she explains, I can set them free, and this will bring me good luck. She shows me four of these tiny cages packed tight with wild birds. I feel seasick all of a sudden. Everything around me is too loud and bright and weird -- the people drinking and laughing in the bars and restaurants, the beautiful girls out the front of the massage parlor waiting for customers, the fluorescent lights of the 7-11. My brain can't even register what the birds are -- it was only later in the air-conditioned calm of our hotel room, looking at a field guide, that I worked out they were Streaked Weavers.

Streaked Weaver (By J.M.Garg, via Wikimedia Commons)

Central Thailand

Four hundred baht? More than ten dollars? I can't pay fifty-odd dollars to free all these birds. And thanks to the undisguised horror on my face, she knows I'm not stopping at just one cage. "One hundred baht for each," I say. I'm bargaining as if I were buying a fake Tiffany necklace at a street market (hey, my starfish pendant looks almost real, okay?). We go back and forth over the price. A whole lot of things occur to me at once:
1. I really just want to drink my lovely chilled white wine.
2. I feel guilty because this woman is dusty and tired in a way I'll probably never be, and here I am just really wanting to drink my lovely chilled white wine.
3. There is no way I'm going to be enjoying another drop of this lovely chilled white wine.
4. The streets of Bangkok are possibly not the best place to release a flock of Streaked Weavers.
5. It's really bad that I'm about to financially reward her for capturing wild birds, pretty much ensuring that she'll do the same thing again tomorrow.
6. And why on God's earth does the Lonely Planet warn you about dodgy tour operators at the Grand Palace but not about sad-looking women persuading you to give them money for birds crammed so tightly into cages that you fear if you don't give her the money, a goodly proportion of them will probably be dead soon?

I hand over the money, and in an instant there are Streaked Weavers everywhere -- in potted plants, on chairs, on power lines -- calling their little heads off. Some sit panting on the sidewalk for a few moments before shooting off to join the others. They quickly form a flock and hightail it out of there. No one else seems to have even noticed any of this going on. I feel totally conflicted about the whole thing -- but at least all those eyes aren't beseeching me anymore. Maybe I can choke down the last of my wine after all.

And that, my friends, is when I see what I can't believe I didn't see all along. There on the road just behind her, a big box. The woman is all smiles now as she unwraps a cloth from around it, and there it is: The mothership. More eyes than I can count. A noisy, feathery, jam-packed Streaked Weaver condo.

I've seen a Snowy Owl!

The call goes out: a Snowy Owl at Stratford Point. Not much more than a 20-minute drive away. Grab binoculars, camera, car keys, jump in car. Frank Gallo gives me directions to this place I've been a million times before but of course can't remember how to get to. He's giving exceptionally good directions, but to me it sounds like: words, words, diner, turn left, words, words, airport, other words, more words -- what is wrong with me? Anyone who gives me directions may as well be talking in Abyssinian. I know that even once I've plugged the street address into the GPS, I will still get lost. Now why is everyone suddenly obeying the speed limit? It's un-American. Why won't that giant SUV get out of the overtaking lane? What the hell is that guy in the giant Cadillac tank-boat-thing with Tennessee license plates actually doing? Certainly not driving. I take a wrong turn. Yes, even with the GPS. Somehow I get there. Step out of car. Cell phone falls out of pocket onto pavement, falls into more pieces than I realized a cell phone consisted of. The bird is astonishing. It's just sitting there, 20 yards away from a knot of birders, napping, occasionally opening its eyes and swiveling its head, absorbing the warmth of the rocks. I get that dissociated feeling you get when you're in the middle of an accident that's unspooling right before your eyes: It's happening, yes, it's happening, but somehow it's not happening; you're registering it all from a distance. All this time -- more than three decades -- and here I am, face to face with this creature. It's head is so rounded, so boofy -- somehow I only fully notice this now, being able to watch it turn that head. And there are barely perceptible ear tufts, fluffing up now and then in the wind, which always blows cold and hard out at Stratford Point. Thank you, Scott Kruitbosch, for finding this beauty today, and Frank Mantlik, for setting up his scope so I could get a good look!

Protesters occupy Foley Square! I still haven't seen a Snowy Owl!

So I was umming and ahhing over whether to go into the city and see the OWS Day of Action today. How weird it would be, I thought, to see subway stations occupied by the masses. (Oh hang on, what's weird about that?) Anyway, my urge to see my first Snowy Owl was more pressing, so I went to East Haven.

(You know, I probably should use that photo-straightening tool in Windows Photo Gallery, but somehow it always seems like cheating to do that.)

Wow, that is a welcoming little place just off Cosey Beach Avenue, in East Haven. Why did I always used to think of "cozy" when I saw that street name? There were "No Parking" and "Private Property" and "No Trespassing" signs everywhere. Um, yeah, okay.

This is the inviting rock where the Snowy Owl was -- yesterday, for hours, when I wasn't:

Whoa, check out that horizon! Was I drunk? No. East Haven most certainly has some kind of strange electromagnetic ley line vortex effect going on.

No Snowy Owl today. The quest continues. And I can't complain, really. It is so quiet down there at this time of year, so unpeopled, that the gulls and Brant and Sanderlings are in a world of their own -- a busy, methodical world of turning shells over and winkling around with their bills to find food. The only sound was the tinkling of shells along the foreshore.

Attack of the 50-foot gull

I have been delightedly looking at Keith Mueller's pictures of the Snowy Owl, which he took yesterday. Now I want to see one myself even more. That a killing machine so powerful it can take down a great big eider duck looks so freaking cute when it yawns is just amazing.

Occupy Wall Street, or look for a Snowy Owl?

There are two birds that I have wanted to see since I was small child: the Wandering Albatross and the Snowy Owl. Both thanks to my mother. The Wandering Albatross became a fixation after she took me to see a live production of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" one night in our town's only big cathedral. I still remember the lead striding down the aisle between the pews -- "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" -- albatross (well, probably a Silver Gull, truth be told) around his neck. I finally saw Wandering Albatrosses this year, on a SOSSA pelagic trip out of Wollongong, in eastern Australia, in August. Even whilst heaving over the side of the boat (turns out I have no sea legs), I was still in awe as the albatrosses sailed by like small, silent planes.

The Snowy Owl, though, huh. Almost every year one turns up in coastal Connecticut for a day or so, and it always seems to be when I am stuck at my desk. The Snowy Owl thing happened thanks to my mother attending art college, painting a giant canvas inspired by a picture from National Geographic of four Snowy Owl chicks hunkered down on a desolate tundra. The idea of tundra, permanently frozen ground, was so appealing to a humidity-hating child stuck in subtropical Australia. Those chicks had gimlet eyes, and they looked somehow superior, as if they knew something the rest of us didn't; I loved that. The picture is still on my parents' wall, those chicks glaring at everyone.

So today I'm torn: Go to NYC to the Occupy Wall Street protests on the 2-month anniversary and soak up history and take photos and you know, BE there, or try and see the Snowy Owl that was hanging out at East Haven yesterday. It's OWS vs. OWL. The inner dialogue is going something like "I'm kind of tired, do I really want to go all the way to the city and tromp around and blah blah..." Then "I might get arrested; I don't want to get arrested" Where did that come from? I'm not really at all scared of being arrested. And "What if it turns violent?" Pfft. Let's face it, I'm just coming up with rational excuses. Neuroscientists have pinpointed the moment that the brain makes a decision, before we even know about it. Then it tells us about it and kindly lets us think that we've made a conscious choice. My brain has already decided that OWL beats OWS, so off I go to try and find that bird...

One of these things is not like the other

We have a new visitor in Milford harbor -- a Pied-billed Grebe. After four years of walking by the harbor every day, you just don't expect to see something different, but there it was all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago. Boink. It popped up from under the water, looking like a rubber ducky compared to the Mallards. And it's stayed around. Now that the weather's getting cold, it's sidling up to the Mallards, coasting along with them. You would think that it might try to do its best to just get along with everyone -- but no, not only is it trying to be a duck, it's trying to be the alpha duck. I saw the cheeky bugger lean forward and bite a female Mallard on the tail, seemingly just for the hell of it, and then dive immediately under the water, leaving just a ripple -- and a confused Mallard turning to look behind her -- in its wake. It was such a soft, fuzzy, fog-advisory Milford day, everything just looked like a Turner painting.

Spot the dinky little interloper

Cue "Jaws" music -- going in for the tail bite

Who? A grebe? You crazy.

Mallards really are beautiful.

What bird are you?

Ruby-crowned Kinglet
by Dan Pancamo
via Wikimedia Commons

You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite bird. I just might start up a birders' dating agency, my algorithm centered on one question, "What is your favorite bird?" There are the bold-hearted Chickadee people, taking on all comers, big or small. The Great Egret, graceful, composed, deliberate in its actions. There are the Starlings, garrulous and social. Belligerent, possessive hummingbirds.

(Yes, I am totally anthropomorphizing. I think part of what makes birds so appealing is that they are like a canvas on which we can project human qualities, while we're simultaneously in awe of their avian, distinctly nonhuman, abilities.)

Soon after moving to Connecticut -- my first fall, colder than any winter I'd ever known -- I was living in a quaint, well-to-do New England town like a postcard that had been breathed into life. My apartment was above that of the only drug addicts in town, so there were raids and my address made it into the local paper's police blotter every second week -- but on the plus side, for a couple of weeks in fall the tree outside the living room window became like the best type of Christmas tree: one decorated with Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets.

The Ruby-crowned instantly became my favorite bird -- it was something about their incessant flitting and wing flicking and their eye ring, so much like the Silvereyes I loved when I was a child. It was something about the way they look both hearty and vulnerable.

I was sitting in the living room one day when -- thunk! -- what looked like a squash ball bounced off my second-floor window. Kids playing, I thought. But then I thought, what if it was a bird? I ran downstairs, and there was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, dead, on the ground beneath the window. I was about to walk away, feeling a little shaken, when I thought, "What if it just looks dead? Would it hurt if I at least tried to warm it up, just in case?" The wind was howling and the sun was close to setting, and if it wasn't already dead, it probably would be soon. So I bent down and picked up the stiff bird. It didn't appear to be breathing. I sat on the ground, enclosing it in both hands, and I felt scratchy and irritable and sad. There always seemed to be a truck idling loudly out front of the downstairs neighbors, and yes, there it was, churning exhaust in my direction as little baggies and cash were exchanged through the window. For some reason, that damn truck and the little baggies and the cash were what tipped me over the edge and made me feel weepy holding my window-crash victim.

And then I felt a slight movement against my palms. The bird was breathing! It began to stir, so I opened up my hands. It looked up at me; I looked down at it. A tiny, dull olive-green bird. At that time of year in Connecticut, people often walk past a whole flock working the undergrowth -- flitting from branch to branch, catching insects -- and don't even realize they are there. They're unobtrusive; they live their life on the down low. You barely see the male's ruby crown unless another bird really presses his buttons . . . and then appears flash of crimson, a tiny feather flag of agitation that pops up. That's when you know that there was something dramatic lurking beneath all along.

This bird hopped up my arm, so light I could barely feel it. It's legs were thinner than toothpicks. It sat on my shoulder for a minute to two, catching the last remaining rays of sun and gathering its wits, and then it called once in my ear -- jit jit -- and was off on the wing, back to the tree to rejoin the flock.

There was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet here,
about a millisecond before I hit the shutter -- honest.

And here.

Oh, and here.

Things I am grateful for today

• Autumn air, which smells of sunshine and dry leaves and dreams deliciously dissolving into memory.
• Seed pods scattered all over the sidewalk, which crunch under your every footstep and crackle in a way that makes you feel like a child again.
• A fish crow making the weirdest mewling sound, so that I looked under a hedge for the kitten that must be there, then around the corner for the mother that must surely be pushing a baby on their afternoon walk, and then finally at the roof line above, and the crow looking down at me, making this soft, plaintive sound.
• Three young yellow-crowned night-herons that swooped into a part of the harbor I have never seen them in before, silent and gray like stealth warplanes.
• Funky Duck, the mind-bending hybrid of mallard and who knows what else, still bobbing around with the mallards as you did all summer, somehow fitting in with them though you are double the size and have those crazy white spectacles.
• An osprey standing in the shallows bathing and drinking as though it were on holiday from the swooping diving flapping fish-snatching hawk life, staying there so long that I began to rehearse in my head the phone call to a wildlife rescue service about this injured, defenseless osprey stuck in Milford harbor.
• The man at the dock who didn't make me feel like a fool when, thinking I was all alone, I laughed out loud as the osprey shook like a dog and took off, then shimmied mid-air, realizing the job of shaking off those droplets wasn't as complete as it had thought -- clumsy and awesome all at once.