Birders are trained to find things that look out of place. It is a self-training that happens naturally over the course of many years of looking for birds.

A slight movement in the bushes likely means a bird or small mammal. That bump on a fence railing or post is probably a small perching bird taking a rest. If you are canoeing and the expanse of calm water ahead of you is broken by barely distinguishable ripples, a diving duck may soon reappear on the surface.

This gift that birders have, I think, is most often on display while driving. Most people will drive by a hawk perched on a branch along the road and not even notice it. Birders, on the other hand, see the blob in the tree from a mile away. A positive identification of the blob is made as you zoom past at 65 miles an hour. Just the other day, I noticed a bald eagle perched along a river. From the road, however, it was largely hidden by branches, but something just didn’t look quite right.

This gift is most evident when driving or walking along a familiar route. If you’ve walked a trail through the woods a thousand times, you get to know where every rock, root and upturned tree is. Anything that looks out of the ordinary is immediately noted and inspected to see if it’s a bird or animal.