“Are you in town for the NASCAR championships?”, asked the Miami rental car person. Strange, the people next to me on the airplane had asked me the same question. While I may consider my weekend birding travel attire as neo-Marlin Perkins (remember Wild Kingdom), clearly my Haverford logo-laden-look (black “H” cap, black “H” vest, and black “H” carry-on) overshadowed my khaki shirt and pants combo; and gave people the impression I was a walking “H auto-parts” sponsor rather than my wish of conjuring up images of Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin, or some other Animal Planet hero.

I traveled to Miami for 36 hours to simply add three non-native but “countable” resident birds to my life-list. I added one…the Purple Swamphen. But I traded in the opportunity to add two parakeets to my list in favor of a needle-in-the-haystack mission.

Purple Swamphen (Miami, Fla)

For me, the adrenaline rush of potentially finding a “code 5 mega-rarity”, a bird not reported publicly for various reasons too confusing to report here….but known to my well-informed guide…is at least equal to that of any athletic contest I have ever played. I don’t have ANY code 5 birds on my life-list and I only have a handful of code 4’s (for the birding aficionados out there: pink-footed goose, barnacle goose, crimson-collared grosbeak and lapwing). The scale basically only goes to 5, as Code 6 birds are extinct!

We spent all Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning searching for a foot-long, chunky, ground-dwelling bird that was very very likely within a football field-sized area of jungle cut with several pathways. We circled and zig-zagged for hours and at one point we even found a very recently molted feather that belonged to this top-secret bird. Alas, we didn’t find the bird.

I am flying home to Philadelphia far from disappointed. Despite recording only one “lifer” and greatly exceeding my budgeted cost-per-new-species figure, I am grateful to have had a chance at being a part of birding history. Maybe next time……