Back Yard Birds

I possess a finely-honed ability to second-guess myself.  You might even say it borders on the obsessive.  It's one of the things that makes me run away screaming at the mere thought of a job interview.   After the fact, I will literally make myself ill going over the instant replays in my mind, and looking for an adequately sized rock under which to crawl.

I have never been one for practicing interview responses in front of a mirror, have never been really gung-ho about anticipating the questions and having a well-rehearsed response on the tip of my tongue for each and every one of them.  So this morning's off the cuff, say-anything phone interview has provided me with plenty of willow sticks with which to flagellate myself.  But there is one exchange that has turned out to be kind of funny; and has ultimately served to drag me out from under that rock and give me some hope that I am not as ridiculous as I allow myself to believe.

Toward the end of the conversation, the guy asked me, "So, what do you know about backyard birds?" (This being an interview for a position at the Backyard Bird Shops...)  And I proceeded to regale him with the story of how we had just returned from Klamath, where we had gone to see the eagles. 

Reviewing this later, I thought, "Idiot!  Eagles are not backyard birds!  Duh. Now he thinks I'm a dork."

Later in the afternoon, I decided to take a glass of wine, go sit on my back deck and be with my birds.  I was thinking juncos and hummers, maybe a woodpecker and certainly the little posse of chickadees that hits the feeders a couple of times a day.  As I sat, I heard a telltale squeaky chatter over my head, and looked up to see an eagle soaring low into view, wings spread wide, wheeling a bit and talking to him(her)self.  It made for a tall Doug fir at the end of the block and disappeared into the topmost branches.  In the course of the next half hour, it left the tree and made several low passes over the neighborhood, chattering quietly to itself, obviously on some kind of mission (hunting for a mate?) 

Now, I have seen eagles  soaring over my yard, usually high up, on their way to or from their nightly roosts up on the ridge west of town.  But I've never seen one so cozily make itself at home in one of the neighborhood trees. 

And the Universe said, "What was that  you were thinking about eagles not being back yard birds?"

So maybe the interview didn't go as badly as I thought.