Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Saturday, July 8, 2017

Bird is the word

Dave Barry once quipped, "There is a fine line between a hobby and a mental illness."

In my case, that line is a little blurry sometimes.  My dad used to say about me that I was the type of person who would test the depth of a river with both feet.  I'm fascinated with genealogy (at latest count, my family tree database contains almost 115,000 names).  Since getting back into running last year, I have done ten 5K races and try to run or cycle every single day.  I've been passionate about music since, no lie, I was three years old.  And then there's birds...

This last-mentioned obsession is what is taking me away from New York (and from Skeptophilia) for ten days.  I'm leaving tomorrow morning for my very favorite place in the world, the highlands of Ecuador, for a hiking and birding expedition into the cloud forests.  Our home base will be Mindo, a little town northwest of the capital city of Quito, which I visited last time I was there (fifteen years ago), and which to this day is the most beautiful place I've ever seen.  I've been a lot of places, but Mindo is one of the only ones that I truly, honestly could happily move to permanently and never look back.

Among the birds I hope to see are the Golden Tanager...


... the Flame-faced Tanager...


... the Violet-tailed Sylph...


... the Masked Trogon...


... and the Purple Honeycreeper.

[all images courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Along the way, I hope to hike through some beautiful places and make some new friends.

So anyhow, I'll see y'all when I return on July 20.  I'll post some of my own photographs -- none, I'm sure, as nice as the ones above -- but at least enough to give you an idea of what this spectacular corner of the world looks like.

Until then, Dear Readers -- keep hoisting the banner of skepticism, and keep sending me ideas and topics for future posts!

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