GREENE CO., MO. — I think I’m having an identity crisis.

Reading about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker controversy stirred everything up again. April’s news that the woodpecker’s existence had been confirmed sent thrills through all of us — but now a throng of skeptics are trying their best to argue that the hope was a false one.

And why? A quest for truth? A valiant attempt to deal fairly and realistically with the scraps of evidence we have, even if it results in ridicule and hostility? Jealousy? Bloated egos clashing with cataclysmic force? Late-summer doldrums?

Who are these people we call birders? Who am I?

There are the I-know-mockingbirds-and-that’s-no-mockingbird birders. Jason and I have laughed about them for years. They’re the ones who call nature centers around the country and try to convince overworked volunteers that their parakeet escaped and hybridized with a chickadee. They’re the ones who write drivel like this.

But sparrows and Blue Jays bring pleasure to those people. Who says they have to know the difference between a Black Rail and a Song Sparrow? Do I have a right to be impatient with them just because they can correctly identify about 5 species?

There are the power birders. They run in packs and have the best equipment money can buy. They are outspoken, oft-published, and well-dressed. They are looked on with the same sense of awe that those in other circles reserve for drugged-up, muscle-bound thugs in jerseys. They publish pages full of eye candy and/or reports of their trips/conversations/opinions of power.

They do a lot to advance the cause of conservation and increase knowledge about our birds. Who would begrudge them their opportunities? Who would lose sleep because the power birders are obnoxious? Do I want to be like one of them or not?

There are the academic birders. They do their best to uncover birds who have wandered far from home — birds that are tattered, worn, slightly quirky, and very sneaky. They spend hours on gulls and shorebirds especially, convinced that ONE of the thousands of birds before them must have taken a wrong turn somewhere south of Thailand. They attempt to estimate feather lengths within just two or three millimeters.

Maybe some birders really are that good. Maybe they aren’t just wishing birds onto their lists; maybe they’re better than all of us. But can I be skeptical? What does it say of me if I confess I have no interest in golden-plover primary projection?

There are the listserv leeches, the tickers, the Bambi birders, and the birders whom some of us have long suspected actually use performance-enhancing drugs. But I don’t have time to discuss all of them.

Then there’s me. Where do I fit in? As always, I like to think I’ve found something of a happy medium, given my resources, commitments, and priorities. But maybe I’m as hopeless as all the rest. Or maybe we’re all OK. Or maybe I really AM the only one who’s got it right.

It’s almost September. Come quickly, fall migrants. Deliver me from this brooding.

GREENE CO., MO. — I’ve been home just over a week and have more or less finished listing the birds I saw while away. I’m still not completely done since I can’t find all the information I need. And my conscience still nags me about a few sightings — can I list them or not?

But one must draw the line somewhere, and for now I’ve drawn it here. I added 102 birds to my life list, bringing me up to 517.

Yellow-footed Gull did not make the cut. Neither did Dusky Lory, but I’d decided that before I ever left Madang. Brown Noddy is on; Black Noddy is not. Ebony Myzomela and Atoll Starling are on unless I someday discover that the species on Wuvulu Island go by different names. The triller from Port Vila is not listed yet. I cannot find enough description to decide whether it was Long-tailed or Polynesian. Hopefully I can clear that up when and if I get my hands on a Vanuatu field guide.

I added 57 lifers in PNG — considerably less than 10% of the nation’s species. Some of the birds, like Black Kite and Collared Kingfisher, range over much of the Old World. Others, like the aforementioned starling and myzomela, are extremely limited in distribution. Seven of the 57 lifers were pigeons and doves; only two were psittacids. Not one was a bird-of-paradise. Papua New Guinea, I shall return.

In Australia, I saw 38 life birds. Of those, three were cormorants and five were honeyeaters. Three — Spotted Dove, Common Myna, and European Goldfinch — were introduced. The fairywrens were dazzling. The Rock Warbler was serendipity at its finest. The lyrebirds never showed. Thirty-eight species is about 5% of Australia’s birds. Australia, I’m not finished with you either.

The quick trip to Vanuatu yielded six lifers. Two were doves, two were swiftlets, one was a honeyeater, one was a white-eye. Three can be found in very few places on earth. The entire nation of Vanuatu has only 70-odd species of birds, but many of those are endemic, or nearly so.

And in California, I added Black Turnstone. I don’t want to talk about the Yellow-footed Gull. Or whatever it was.

Red-rumped Parrots, Red-bellied Fruit-Doves, the Great Cuckoo-Dove, Gray Crows. Kookaburras, friarbirds, and terns. Bee-eaters. Tropicbird.

I’m not in this game to keep score. I’m in it … because I long to see … the fingerprints of Perfection. And I have. And I will.

GREENE CO., MO. — The only thing more disgusting than extraordinarily lucky people is extraordinarily lucky people who have no idea how extraordinarily lucky they actually are.

I, I am happy to report, am one of those people — at least for today.

I’ve slowly been sifting through my notes and records, researching sightings from my trip. I do not have a field guide that covers Wuvulu Island, so I have been trying to identify some of the more puzzling species using range and race information from Clements’ “Birds of the World: A Checklist.” I paid $50 for the book a few years back and had begun to question the validity of my investment. Now that I’ve actually made it off our continent, however, I am very, very grateful for the massive tome.

Anyway, something interesting came up in my research today. I decided to look up the starlings I’d encountered on Wuvulu. Clements lists no races for Singing Starling, so my theory of a yellow-eyed race doesn’t appear to hold water.

There is, however, a short-tailed starling with yellow eyes. It’s the Atoll Starling, Aplonis feadensis, and it’s found on only a handful of tiny, remote islands in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons: “an extreme small-island specialist,” says BirdLife.

Translation? Very few people ever see this bird. In fact, I found this ‘trip report’ by a ‘British chap’ who is overly ‘fond’ of inverted ‘commas’ (and, I’m afraid, is ‘a bit’ profane): Extreme Birding. The poor man suffered a miserable voyage for a look at the bird, and I was surrounded by them for days. (Granted, I was not surrounded by Red-footed Boobies or Nicobar Pigeons. But we’re talking about starlings.)

The photo posted on his page was the only one Google could find on the entire Web. I took a few photos the last day on Wuvulu, but the bird was distant and the light poor. Had I known what a treasure the birds were, I would have tried much harder to get a decent image.

Doubts still nag me, though. Nowhere do I find reference to Atoll Starlings on Wuvulu Island. They breed on the Ninigos, which are right next door. But could the Wuvulu birds be something else? Surely not — there’s nothing else for them to be. I found one reference to a “Notes on the birds of Wuvulu Island” by Coates and Swainson, published in the Papua New Guinea Bird Society’s newsletter. If the society still exists, it apparently does not have a presence on the web. I cannot find a guide that covers the Bismarck Archipelago for less than $50. I think I will email the BirdLife folks and see if they can help me.

Tonight I may dream of a glossy black bird and its glittering eye — the Atoll Starling — a trophy, a mystery, a wish. And I lived among them for days.

GREENE CO., MO. — It has been hot. Pitilessly, inexorably hot, and I have stayed inside.

This evening as I stepped out the front door, I heard the hideous whine of a saw — no, it’s a weed trimmer — down the street. But even over the noise, I could hear the monotonous drone of a cicada. I noticed how cool it was under the threatening clouds, and I noticed drops of water on my car and on my skin.

But it wasn’t going to rain. And the cicadas droned on through the open windows of my car. At first I thought they sounded bored; then I thought they might have been passionately interested in their own voices and only outsiders were weary.

Robins scattered through the field as I drove along its edge. I guessed they were immatures gathered in a post-breeding flock; a quick look through the binoculars confirmed. I heard the peeping of a young, hungry cardinal, and I heard the soft cry of a nuthatch.

Then the world grew silent, save for the terrible roar of the lawn mower. Dust swirled and projectiles whizzed, mercifully missing my eyes and the green Camaro by the curb. The roaring blades ground crabgrass into a sticky pesto. A frantic Bufo narrowly avoided the same fate.

Only the cicadas were louder even than the awful engine. Above its roar I could hear them still. And I stole glances at the sky, where a swift peddled calmly against the gray clouds.

Then I stopped the mower, and the cicadas droned on, on, on. I heard a distant flock of blackbirds gathering for the night — starlings and grackles, perhaps.

I drove to Truman Elementary School and heard a nighthawk in the distance. Then there they were, right overhead, calling with soft, whispered voices I had never heard them use. Doves, robins, chippies, mockers flew by occasionally as light waned. I didn’t need to see them well. The softest sound told me who they were — voices of most trusted friends.

The nighthawks fluttered, chased, and floated, sometimes executing dramatic dives that almost made my stomach lurch. One rattled sharply at the bottom of a dive, and I caught my breath. I remembered reading something … feathers … flight display. Years of watching nighthawks but I had always missed this.

The cicadas droned all the way home, joined by grasshoppers who sounded like gadgets of gears and springs. Ice cream and a shower wait inside. Later, when the light is quite gone, the katydids will begin to sing, joining in a mighty chorus.

I will go to the porch to listen, as they tell me that it’s summer, as they tell me that I’m home.

SALTON SEA, CALIF. — Mark was kind enough not to tell me what he really thought when I suggested we go birding. He was even kind enough to wake me when my jet-lagged body failed to respond to the feeble beeping of my watch. The three of us piled into Shroud’s green bug and were on the road by 6:30, only half an hour later than we’d planned.

We took highway 78 east instead of the 8. As we began descending from mountains into the desert, I saw agaves, cacti, and ocotillo thriving on the dry, rugged slopes. Rabbits and a few little rodents scampered across the narrow, empty road ahead; then there was a roadrunner.

By 9 a.m., we reached the National Wildlife Refuge. I clambered out of Shroud’s tiny backseat and heard a high-pitched racket from a nearby tree. It was a Verdin. Shroud and Mark did not seem interested, and I wondered how well this was going to work. I started hoping for big, spectacular waterbirds.

But it wasn’t clear where the water was. There was only one trail, so we started off. We came first to a wooden observation deck, which we climbed as a few Mourning Doves scattered. From the deck, we had a distant view of water, and it was covered with birds. I could make out white pelicans, but the great distance and heat shimmer prevented me from identifying much else, let alone explaining it to my uninitiated companions.

Just then, a ragged Great-tailed Grackle flew into some nearby scrub. As Shroud and Mark found her in their binoculars, I started talking about grackles in general and Great-tails in particular. They asked me questions, and I began to think that the day might turn out all right after all.

We continued on the trail, which was a parched, dusty affair leading through desert scrub. Power lines ran along on our left, and I spotted a small bird on a lower wire. We stopped to look, and I told Mark and Shroud it was a Western Kingbird. In all honesty, it wasn’t a great view of the bird, and I didn’t see its tail well. I assumed it was a Western, thinking that none of the others made it to Southern California. I didn’t explain that, though.

Mark found a Mourning Dove on her nest just above eye level. As we looked at her, strange little noises kept coming from low in the brush. I looked up just in time to see chunky bodies hurtling low above the road. “Quail!” We spent the next few moments bending low, straining to see into the brush, but the birds never gave us anything more than the most fleeting of glimpses. At first I guessed they were Scaled Quail, but then I wondered whether they might have been California or Gambel’s quail — whichever occur here. It’s really too bad I don’t actually know what I’m doing.

The power line was good to us. We stopped again to look at a shrike and saw a White-tailed Kite perched farther down the line. I talked briefly about shrikes’ notorious eating habits, and then we moved on to get a better look at the kite. After a little bit, it took off and circled ahead, glowing brilliant white against the intense blue sky and providing us an excellent opportunity to study its field marks.

Along the way, we remarked on the strange powdery consistency of the soil and marveled as we were surrounded by a swarm of infinitesimal white insects.

Finally, we approached the lake shore. As we did, a gorgeous skimmer sailed in front of us, swooping low over a channel and slicing the water with its remarkable mandible. A stilt waded in the shallows near shore, and pelicans of both species flew in small groups or rested on the water. A pair of Black Phoebes fed nearby, and Shroud saw one snatch a butterfly from the air. Caspian Terns flew over regularly, fish clasped in their heavy red bills; I wondered if they were nesting.

The lake was on our left, stretching off into the distance and covered by a heavy haze. A white pelican floated on the water’s surface, appearing like a mirage through the hot, dense air. On the right were the small pools we had seen from the observation decks. Now we could see clearly the skimmers, Caspian Terns, and pelicans that filled them. I also noticed a few distant coots. The Caspian Terns screeched continually, and one small group flew straight toward us making all kinds of racket.

As we walked along the shore, we saw more stilts, and a Willet flew in. I tried to explain that its plainness was actually helpful in identification, and then it flew, exposing black-and-white wings and crying, “Willet! Pee-wee-willet!”

Snowy Egrets flushed, yellow feet brilliant in the hot sun.

Then I looked up as a huge gull flew by. It was very dark, and as it passed me, I thought its feet looked yellow. A similarly sized immature gull trailed behind, and then they were out of sight. Was it — oh please come back. Come back and land on a rock, stretching those beautiful yellow legs for us! I kept walking, hoping for another chance.

The trail led up a rocky hill, around which two kestrels circled. We climbed to the top and looked out across the sea. The sun beat down mercilessly, and Shroud had forgotten sunscreen.

We started back down, stopping to examine strange plants that grew in the unforgiving rock. Their leaves were tough and white, and I couldn’t imagine how they eked out an existence in such a hostile place. They didn’t seem to have any chlorophyll, and there was nothing to parasitize. But they lived.

Salt crystals filled tracks in the dirt road like frost on winter’s day. The gull never came back.

We made it back to the car, sweaty, thirsty, and ready for air conditioning. I wanted to keep birding, but our brief time was already used up — and a little more. Yellow-footed Gulls, cormorants, quail, and other desert treasures will have to wait for another day.

TORREY PINES RECREATIONAL AREA, CALIF. — Large swifts slice through the stiff, cool breeze with incredible speed, hugging the spectacular sandstone cliffs. I don’t have my binoculars, but they seem to have flashes of white below.

The paragliders overhead look enticing, but the riders dangle helplessly, depending on the wind. The swifts are wild, daring, and free, unfettered by cables, canvas, or clocks.

Gusts of wind tickle pink flowers that cling to the clifftops and threaten to lift my shirt off my body, as if pretenses do not belong in such a place. Oh for the flight of the swifts. But we should be going soon.

Mark wants a list of the birds we saw today. I wonder….