Look, a bird

Ok, so it's a ladybird rather than a bird bird. And yes, I grew up calling them ladybugs like 99% of the people on the left side of the Atlantic. The professional naturalist in me knows that they're beetles rather than bugs, though, so I've tended to shift my terminology over the years. Just like gophers have become ground squirrels, especially when I'm talking to the public. Er, except for the Pocket Gopher, which isn't a ground squirrel (and is, in fact, a gopher).

But that's not why you called.

There's a whackload (the official scientific term) of chickadees outside my office widow right now, cracking open sunflower seeds from a nearby feeder, chasing each other around, and generally being distracting. It's not unusual to see birds outside the window here; the nature centre is, after all, at the entrance to a wildlife sanctuary, and there's a cluster of bushes right here that gives them perfect roosts and shelter. Lately we've even had a flicker coming by regularly and sitting on the top of the window frame. We generally only get to see his bottom half, but we figure that he's probably cleaning dead insects and such from the building. If that's the case, more power to him. Or it. I haven't got a good enough look to know whether it's a he or a she.

All this is probably making me sound like I know what I'm talking about, but mostly I suck at birds (and I've really got to start watching how I use the phrase suck at. The person who asked for permission to use my ground squirrel -- not gopher -- drawing yesterday found it in a post on the other blog in which I boldly stated I suck at ground squirrels. It made for an interesting exchange of business e-mails afterwards, I can tell you. Note that you used the phrase professional naturalist a couple of paragraphs above this, Dee. Suck at doesn't really indicate professional anything. Well, one thing, maybe. But we all need to get our minds out of the gutter at this point). Oh, I know my basics after all of these years doing the job I do, but I always hesitate to answer bird questions. It's partly because I'm not as comfortable with birds as I am with mammals and plants (of the three, by the way, mammals are by far the cuddliest...), but largely because there are so many real birders out there. Birders can tend to be obsessive, and if I'm asked a bird question by somebody other than a child or someone who's just put up their first bird feeder, the chances are that the person asking the question already knows about five times more about the subject than I do.

Aaanyway. The reason I started this post, and the reason for the post title (which has become something of a shorthand amongst some of us for Sorry, but I just got distracted) is that work, health, and life have been a bit like a shrub full of chickadees for me lately. I seem to be chasing around branches, twittering (as opposed to tweeting, which I've also been doing. Only on the work account, though) and flighty, and not really getting much done for all the distraction. The blog's suffered, obviously. Will that continue? Oh, probably. I'm going to try to make it more than the once a week effort it's started to become, but no promises. Whatever happens, happens.

And there'll likely be more birds along the way. Especially with this office set-up. Back to work for me, now.