I glanced out my window the other morning and thought, "Boy, that's a large crow on that tree over there." I picked up my binoculars for a closer look, and discovered a turkey vulture.

Don't make assumptions.

Cliches, aphorisms, words to live by ... they've become trite because they contain a kernel of truth. As I thought more about my crow-turkey vultur misidentification, I realized that there is a lot of home-grown wisdom to be found in bird watching.

Don't be ashamed to admit you don't know something.

I love going bird watching with experts. (I've been a bird watcher for about 15 years and still consider myself a rank amateur.) They have much to share, including the ability to admit ignorance. "What's that over there?" I'll ask. They peer into their spotting scopes, consult their well-thumbed guides, check the focus on their binoculars, and announce, with mock seriousness and a gracious good humor, "It's a bird."

Be patient.

For many years, I've put out a humming bird feeder every April. I boil up my own sugar-water mix, which I change frequently. I plant nectar-producing flowers attractive to hummers. I even put in a bird bath with a bubbler near the feeder. And every year, I sit and watch and wait ... and chase away the squirrels and house finches that love sugar water. I often will get a hummer - one only - around the first week in August. It's probably a migrant. Last summer, a female ruby-throated humming bird showed up the first week in June, and stayed around for most of the summer.

Then, one morning in early May, I was driving car pool when my cell phone rang. The only people with the number are my husband and the school nurses. Since son #1 was sitting next to me and son #2 was at home waiting for the bus, I knew it was my husband. My first reaction was to turn to my son and ask if he'd forgotten his lunch - again. He assured me he hadn't as I was groping for the phone (probably the second most dangerous activity to do while driving; the most dangerous is birding).

My husband informed me that he was looking out the window at - a hummingbird!!!

My perseverance paid off at last.

Read carefully.

Continuing with the topic of humming birds: the first time I saw one, several years ago, I spent an inordinate amount of time checking and rechecking the guide books to identify what I'd seen. If I'd bothered to read the descriptions instead of just looking at the pictures, I'd have saved a lot of time. I live in Southern New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia. The only hummers east of the Mississippi are ruby?throated.Which leads to the next aphorism....

Don't make things more complicated than they have to be.

Chances are, my first hunch about a bird's identification is correct. I can drive myself crazy second guessing myself. I was convinced one day that a female grosbeak was in my yard, despite the fact that I'd never seen one before and the bird didn't quite look like the pictures in the books and its beak wasn't really all that thick. The simple solution was the correct one: it was a female red-winged blackbird, of which I get many.

Be flexible.

It's easy to let your preconceived notions take over. Northern harriers have a white patch at the base of the tail that make them easy to identify, right? Well, yes, but not every hawk-like bird with a patch of white at the base of the tail is a harrier. I was recently birding with a group of on-line friends from the New Jersey Audubon Birding Forum. We spotted a hawk-like bird with a patch of white at the base of the tail.

"Harrier," I said with utmost and misplaced confidence. "Cooper, " said a fellow birder. After a short, intellectual debate ("Is, too." "Is not." "Is, too." "Is not."), I realized she was absolutely correct. I was so sure of my "facts" (that harriers have what we affectionately dubbed white butts) that I'd ignored the fact that the habitat, wing shape, and soaring pattern were all wrong for a harrier. I also learned that Cooper's hawks can also show a white patch while flying.

Don't get lazy.

Another bird I've been trying - unsuccessfully until recently- to attract to my yard is the Baltimore oriole. I know they spend the summers in the woods near my house. Every winter, after the leaves fall, I spot at least one new oriole nest. I bought an "oriole buffet" feeder that has place for sugar water, grape jelly, and an orange half. The squirrels love the feeder, and usually manage to steal the fruit (after eating all the grape jelly). Nevertheless, I kept trying. But I have to admit that I was getting discouraged at times. When it's a typical Philadelphia August day, with the humidity and temperatures in a race to see which one can reach the highest number, I really don't feel like going outside to change the sugar water. Last year, I should have. I finally got an oriole at the feeder. It took one sip of the rancid mix, flew off, and wasn't seen again. But, I was persistent (stubborn?) and put out the oriole feeder again this spring. I was rewarded when a male oriole showed up in April. It came back for several days. Of course, it ignored the oriole feeder, but it did enjoy the meal worms I put out for the wrens.

Even if you're sure you're right, double-check.

This aphorism is similar to "don't make assumptions." I once almost missed seeing a large flock of Northern flickers checking the ground for bugs because I figured they were robins. I gave a raft of mallards no more than a cursory glance, until I decided to take a closer look and realized that the "mallard-black duck" hybrid was a red-breasted merganser. And that there was a solitary coot floating among them.

You can't plan for everything.

Some of my most memorable sightings have been purely coincidental. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. There is a half?dead oak tree just in back of our property. (We managed to save it from demolition by uttering that magic word, "habitat.") Twice a year (spring and fall, during migration season) for the past few years, an osprey has landed on the tree to eat its lunch, a fish caught from the nearby lake (actually a large detention basin with a 2 mile walking path around it). In the three years since it first showed up (or, rather, since I first saw it), I have missed seeing the osprey only one spring. Yet, if I hadn't glanced out my kitchen window at the tree at precisely the right moment twice a year, I wouldn't even know that this tree is a regularly scheduled stop off point for it.

And then there was the time that I was passing by the window just as a bald eagle flew by. Talk about memorable moments!

On the other hand....

You can't always get what you want.

Every birder knows that you can check migration patterns, weather reports, habitats, Rare Bird Alerts, you can pack every conceivable bird guide, binoculars, and birding scope, get up at dawn and return after dusk, and still not find the bird you're looking for. But that's part of the fun of the chase.

Don't be a bore.

How many times have you politely said, "How are you?" to an acquaintance, only to sense your eyes glazing over as you are treated to a litany of complaints? The same thing has happened to me, but with me as the perpetrator rather than victim. I was checking out the lake behind the house when some neighbors strolled by. "See anything interesting?" they asked.They were almost comatose by the time I realized that they really couldn't have cared less about the double-crested cormorant I had just seen for the first time in our lake. Now when they see me with my binoculars, they wave from the distance and keep walking.

Don't impose your interests on others.

My pre?adolescent son very patiently tried to explain to me one day that he feels about birding the way I do about his Nintendo games: bored.

I have learned the hard way never to go birding with a non-birder. Even if it's at his suggestion. My husband actually volunteered one day to drive me around the Forsyth Wildlife Refuge, Brigantine Division, an eight?mile drive through tidal marshes, mud flats, and woods. It's a wonderful habitat for all kinds of wild fowl and hawks. About half-way through, he refused to stop for me to look anymore. "You've already seen it," he said. The next time I went, it was by myself.

No problem is too tough to solve.

Now we come to the saga of my on-going struggle against squirrels. There really aren't that many in my yard - about 3/4 on a regular basis - except during the late winter/early spring, when their numbers double as they vie for territory and mates. But the few that I have manage to eat everything they can, including baffles, feeders, fruit, meal worms, sugar water, safflower seed, and nyjer seed. They hog the feeders and don't let the birds near them.

I have gradually solved most of the problems. The suet cakes are in a caged feeder; the peanut hearts are in a weighted feeder; there is pure suet in the one suet feeder they can reach. I took the nyjer seed and wild finch mix feeders off my deck and put them on a tall pole, 10' away from any jump off point, and protected by a metal baffle. I replaced all my black oiler sunflower seeds with safflower seeds in small perchless feeders.

The baffled pole seems to work, finally. The first day it was up, I saw a squirrel try to jump over the baffle; it missed and bumped its head.Instead of giving up, it moved further back, recalculated its trajectory (I think they have an innate sense of trigonometry), and jumped right over the baffle onto the feeder. I bought a taller pole and moved the baffle higher. I didn't see how he did it, but the next day, a squirrel was on one of the feeders again. I put up a feeder without a perch. So far, no squirrels have made it to the feeders. But they're trying.

One squirrel (probably the same one), jumped from the deck railing onto a hanging "satellite" feeder hanging from a hook on a window. It removed the plastic stopper, chewed the hold wider, stuck its paw inside, and took out the seed. The safflower seed, that they supposedly don't like.

Another one is having fun getting the peanuts out of the weighted feeder. It has figured out how to hang upside down without putting its paws onto the spring-loaded arm. The feeder stays open; he eats. But at least he can't steal the feeder (as he used to do with a different peanut feeder I had, even after I had practically locked it onto a tree branch). And he can't eat too much before falling off. Also, I figure that any creature that goes to that much trouble to get something, deserves a reward.

I had another caged feeder hanging off my deck railing. The squirrel sat on the railing, put his paws around the feeder, tilted the feeder over, and let the sunflower seeds fall into his mouth. I now use safflower seeds in that feeder, and the squirrels leave it alone.

Another large feeder with sunflower seed was constantly being raided by the squirrels. I had a cage put around it, which limited the amount they could eat. I then tried safflower seed in the feeder, but the squirrels would still eat it. So I've gone back to the sunflower seed, especially since the holes in the screen were too large for the safflower.

All of which leads to the next, and perhaps contradictory, aphorism:

Compromise.

I will never give up the fight against the squirrels, although I suspect often that I am fighting a losing battle. But I am willing to compromise. They can eat, so long as they don't steal the feeders, damage them, or empty them. And they have to share with the birds.

And, when all else fails:

Learn to accept defeat graciously.

Okay, I admit it, I did give up to some extent - I set up a separate feeding station just for the squirrels, on the opposite side of the yard from the other feeders. I put out corn cobs, pressed corn blocks (in the feeder that used to hold the finch cakes, which the squirrels adored), and "squirrel delight," a mixture of corn, striped sunflower seeds, and peanuts in the shell. It took the squirrels about 15 minutes to find the feeders, and within the first 2 hour, I had to replace the corn cobs. It's too soon to know yet whether this new area will keep the squirrels away from the other feeders, but one can only hope.

So what have I learned from bird watching? I have learned that life can be as uncertain as whether a pair of bald eagles will return to a nesting site, as confusing as trying to identify fall warblers or sandpipers, as frustrating as trying to attract humming birds or orioles to your yard, as annoying as trying to get rid of squirrels, as contradictory as all these aphorisms.