When a friend and colleague, upon being celebrated for her retirement after many years of good works, exclaimed, "I won't be joining no choir. And I won't become a birder!" I stayed quiet.

As much as I might have liked singing before the age of twelve, sixty years later I don't think I'd be much into it.

But I was already becoming a birder.

And I've continued. I started a Kitchen-Window Bird List a year or two ago and every day I look out the window thinking there may be another to add to the List.

This morning, in my eighth year of retirement, and in my growing birderocity ("dotage" you ask?) (and still no choir), I saw a new bird, bringing that Kitchen-Window List to 49.

I wasn't sure what it was, and it stayed well under a minute so I only barely got a photo. But I did get a rough one -- and sufficient for Better-Birders-Than-I to corroborate my guess: a Pine warbler.