I owe birds my life in so many ways. And while I no longer keep lists of the birds I see, I can still recall each and every species that I’ve seen and where I saw it first or, perhaps most memorably, with whom I saw it. There’s not just the visual memory; so many birds trip other sensory triggers—the sulfur stink of pluff mud and the beak clatter of a phalanx of Wood Storks feeding in a Low Country salt marsh, or the short-breathed bite of high altitude and sweet aroma of Ponderosa pine while watching White-headed Woodpeckers in eastern Oregon. After all the time in the field is done, the memories of the birds and bird-filled places remain, and the people I’ve met lie deep within, too. My encounters with others “out there,” birders and non-birders alike, are overwhelmingly positive. However, my life as a birder of a different hue is sometimes challenged. A recent unpleasant experience with a farmer whose land, not so far from my southern Piedmont homeplace...