Walking into the Irish sky

Go for a walk with me sometime, preferably out in the woods or country, or at least a nice park or neighborhood. You will notice something. Anytime a bird flies overhead, or something starts twittering in a tree, my gaze will shoot into the sky. I may or may not stop walking, and my conversation may or may not waver.

I'm not a hard core birdwatcher, but damn, I do enjoy it when I do. To be fair, I can get pretty easily distracted by other flora and fauna, but birds fascinate me. It might be the fact that they can fly, who knows for sure. At any rate, the prospect of seeing or hearing something unfamiliar makes me kind of giddy, and Ireland didn't disappoint.

So many birds, everywhere. Some I recognized from stories, some I had seen on nature documentaries in the past, and some were new to me, if not exactly a rarity in their home country. Driving along, one could open a window and hear them singing. I bought a book to help me name them. I even had a conversation with a rook who either found me personally intriguing or thought I had food, who knows.

I will probably never be the kind of person who travels somewhere just to see a new kind of bird, but you can guarantee that part of me will always be paying close attention whenever something darts across a patch of sky.