Lost and Found

Just got back from Florida. The large blackbird flocks have arrived in Florida, along with the wintering Palm Warblers, but no big flocks of Robins yet. Lots of the usual southern species, Pileateds, NOMOs, Wild Turkey, Carolina Wrens, an impossibly tame Sandhill Crane in the middle of a Target parking lot (didn't even move when cars pulled up right next to it), all of the expected herons, a couple of Wood Storks, and a Barred Owl that nearly decapitated BINAC. (Look, he started it. Hooting away in *our* territory day after day. We had to respond. And did. We're still not sure how he snuck up on us, we never saw him, but we did hear his wings as he took a swipe at us. Suppose we deserved it, though.)

Upon arriving back at Casa de BINAC, we noticed "Cty of For" on the caller ID. Hmmm, the County Forest Preserves are calling us. (No, we don't know where the stray "of" came from, either.) Maybe some naturalist is calling us with a critical question about preserving bird habitat? Nope. The nice folks at the forest preserves are calling because someone brought in a copy of Sibley to somewhere. Either the person bringing in the Sibley was named "James," or the name "James" was written somewhere in the Field Guide. The message was a little unclear on that point. We assume that this James character lost his Sibley Guide at one of the local county forest preserves, but the message was a little unclear on that, too. But the diligent folks at the forest preserves got our number from the Planetarium (WTF? Who the Hell at the Planetarium is giving out our phone number???) and just wanted to see if we knew who "James" was.

Now, while we appreciate the effort put forth by this diligent public official in trying to return this field guide to its rightful owner, we regrettably do not know every birder named James who might have bought a Sibley Guide in the last five years. We frankly don't know where all of our copies of the damn thing have disappeared to, so unless he's reading this, "James" is gonna be out of luck. And James, nice try, but you might want to think about putting your last name and phone number into your new Sibley Guide.