I Got Over Focused

Today I got a bee in my bonnet to arrange my list of birds seen in Milam County, Texas phylogenetically. That’s how my friend Ann says most birders want to see their bird lists. Here’s the official list, which is all formal and in Latin.

I’m not making it that complex. I’m using David Sibley’s English interpretation, which is how most of the checklists I’ve seen for state parks are organized. There are lots of variations, as I discovered when I looked all all Ann’s examples.

I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity about how many birds of each order we have. Once I got started, I just couldn’t stop arranging. I kept going until all the birds were arranged. I’m embarrassed to say I spent at least four hours formatting, cutting, pasting and labeling.

I sure got fixated on my list! I’ll share it when we are finished.

All that concentration meant that I was a bit late getting to the horses, so I got rained on. Yes! Rain! At least it cooled down a bit. I’m not enjoying the fact that our two moderate weather weeks are over.

I did find a couple of interesting plants today. I was particularly happy to find gomphrena weed on the roadside, because I didn’t know it grew here. I’d seen it before while camping. And I just thought the goldenrod was graceful.

It’s always rewarding to find something new. Living in the moment! Even when hyper focused.