The first time I met him, the stranger didn’t have a name—he was “the zebra-stripey one.” A notch above “anonymous brown blob,” the species all unmet birds fall into. All I knew was that he was elusive. I chased him and ten of his closest friends down a San Diego hiking trail for 30 minutes trying for an ID. It was on the 61st branch that I managed a clear enough picture, shaken through my binoculars.

From blog via This RSS Feed.